Kevin is the first AUSIT member shortlisted for this prestigious biennial honour, which he shares with co-translator Elena Govor.
Between 1912 and 1919, seven Russian newspapers were published weekly in Australia. Kevin and Elena’s shortlisted book Voices in the Wilderness: A Digest of the Russian-Language Press in Australia 1912–1919 (published by Australian Scholarly Publishing) is a digest of writings that they have selected from these shortlived publications and translated.
Kevin says that while the ‘small but vocal community’ which produced them is ‘largely forgotten’ today, the papers are unlike ‘enthusiastic 19th century Russian accounts of Australia’ in that they ‘show us a body of immigrants struggling to establish themselves in what some had viewed as a “working man’s paradise” and adjust to a new life. Educated radicals and newly literate workers of various political persuasions expressed their opinions, along with representatives of the Russian Empire’s different ethnic groups, feeling increasingly that they were ‘voices crying in the wilderness’. With rising militancy in 1918–1919, the editors attracted enhanced scrutiny from Australia’s security agencies, and by late 1919 most of the journalists had left Australia or been deported.
This digest, Kevin and Elena say, therefore ‘makes available material long out of reach in any language … news reports, opinion pieces and letters to the editors of the Brisbane Russian press … a unique and long-buried source of information [which] covers a wide range of topics, including employment, Australian attitudes to newcomers, conscription and the war, and responses to the Russian revolution. Together the translated items constitute a significant cultural document in the story of an immigrant community and an invaluable primary source on the social history of Australia at the time of World War I and the Russian Revolution.’
Kevin wasn’t surprised that Voices in the Wilderness didn’t receive the medal, as ‘our book is very much an outlier, in an odd sort of genre. We’re very pleased to have made the top three.’
The medal was awarded to Stephanie Smee for her translation of On the Line: Notes from a Factory by Joseph Ponthus (Black Inc. Books), below left. Also shortlisted was Josh Stenberg for Jiang Tao’s For a Splendid Sunny Apocalypse (Zephyr Press), below right.
Stephanie Smee contributed an article on the process of translating On the Line to the Winter 2021 issue of In Touch (pages 18–20), which you can find here.
