INTERVIEW PROMPTS — CURRAWONG BOOKS PRESS

Pre-written interview questions and answers for journalists, podcasters, and radio bookers. Use as supplied, paraphrase, or as a starting point for your own conversation. James is available for print, podcast, and radio interviews — write to media@currawongbookspress.com.au.

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1. What is Currawong Books Press, and why start a press at all?

   Currawong Books Press is a small Australian picture-book imprint based in the Huon Valley in southern Tasmania. We publish one or two books a year — slow, carefully made, distinctly Australian. The press exists because the books we wanted to read to our own children, and to the children of our friends, weren't quite being made — quiet stories, set in the bush, that don't shout. So we decided to make them.

2. Why "Currawong"?

   The currawong is one of the great Australian birds — black, glossy, yellow-eyed, with a carol that carries for miles. It's a bird that belongs to almost every state and territory, that adapts to bush and town, that you hear before you see. It felt like the right namesake for a press that wanted to be unambiguously Australian without being clichéd, and that wanted to publish work that carried — like a bird's call — well beyond the place it was made.

3. What does "slow publishing" actually mean in practice?

   It means about eighteen months from first draft to printed copy, per title. The manuscript is edited carefully — read aloud, set aside, revised, set aside again. The illustrations are art-directed and revised across many iterations until they sit alongside the story rather than merely on top of it. The print specifications are chosen for longevity, not unit cost — hardcover, good paper, matte laminate, sewn binding where the format allows it. The opposite of slow publishing is novelty publishing — books made to a deadline, to a trend, to a price point. We are not interested in any of those.

4. The press uses AI-assisted illustration. Talk us through that decision.

   It is the most important thing for any journalist writing about us to understand, and we are deliberately open about it. The illustrations in our books are AI-assisted, art-directed and revised across many iterations. We use AI image generation because, as a single-handed self-funded press in regional Tasmania, the alternative is to publish nothing, or to publish only after many years of saving. We are deeply respectful of professional illustrators — what they do is true art — and we have no quarrel with them. But the technology is here, and we have chosen to be open about using it rather than pretend otherwise. Every book carries an AI-assistance disclosure on the copyright page, and a detailed authorship memo is kept on file for each title, documenting the human direction behind every spread. The taste, the revisions, the decisions about what stays and what goes — all of these are ours.

5. Tell us about Clara the Carolling Currawong.

   Clara is the first book from the press, releasing in December 2027. She is a young currawong who lives in an unnamed stretch of Australian bush, gold-yellow eyes, a carol clear as a bell, glossy black feathers — and a secret tucked deep under her wing. Clara doesn't much fancy the colour black. She wants the pink of a waratah, the gold of a wattle, the blue, blue, never-ending blue of an Aussie summer sky. The book follows her as she goes searching for a colour of her own and learns, in the end, that the brightest colour of all is the one that lives inside you. It's a story about belonging, creativity, and being gloriously your own.

6. Who are you publishing for?

   Children between three and eight, primarily — old enough to follow a story, young enough to want it read to them. But the deeper answer is that we publish for the adult who reads aloud — the parent or grandparent on the couch at the end of the day, the teacher on the mat, the auntie at the holiday house. We try to make books that the reader-aloud still wants to pick up on the fortieth read.

7. What's distinctive about being based in regional Tasmania?

   The Huon Valley shapes everything. The wattle, the bottlebrush, the gum trees, the carol of a currawong at first light — these are not background details, they are the texture of the books. Being away from the major publishing centres of Sydney and Melbourne is, frankly, an advantage. It slows everything down. It keeps the press close to the country the books are set in. And it means we are making books about a part of Australia that isn't often the centre of children's literature.

8. What's next for the press?

   After Clara, the next title is already underway — a story about a small wombat called Burnie, illustrated in a different but related style. We aim for one or two books a year, on the same slow schedule. Beyond that, we are content to publish fewer books, better, for as long as it makes sense to do so.

9. How can the public follow what the press is doing?

   The Currawong Letter, a monthly editorial newsletter, is the best way. It sends about once a month, runs to roughly five hundred words, and explores the kind of subjects that come up when you spend your life making picture books — reading aloud, representation, the difference between a book a child likes and a book a child loves. Sign up at currawongbookspress.com.au or at clara.currawongbookspress.com.au.

10. Where can readers buy your books?

    All Currawong Books Press titles are distributed globally through IngramSpark — meaning your local bookshop can order any of them on standard trade terms. Online, the books are available everywhere print-on-demand reaches: Booktopia, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Blackwell's, Hive, and a long list of regional retailers. The signed-and-numbered editions are sold exclusively through the press website.
