AUSTRALIA’S LITERARY ORGANISATIONS were once bastions of new ideas, creative expression and open discourse. Our writers’ centres and festivals, literary journals and publishers, universities, training organisations, libraries and media outlets were trusted to record our history and imagine new possibilities. They nurtured and shared the work of writers and storytellers and supported a broad ecosystem of literary sector workers – administrators, agents, editors and publishers, teachers and academics, reviewers and journal- ists, illustrators, designers, marketers, booksellers, librarians, board members and more.

But if this reads like a fairytale, it’s because the concept now seems almost fictional. Support for writers and readers has decreased and become more conditional. Monocultural literary organisations have become even less diverse, representative and culturally safe. Insurmountable rifts have formed within the writing community, and between writers and organisations, staff and management, leaders and boards, boards and arts ministers, and between organisations and their donors, funders and communities. Publishers and writers’ centres have started encouraging writers to use the same AI platforms that are stealing our work and our jobs. Sustaining a literary career has become even more difficult: many writers are unable to keep writing, and literary workers are leaving their jobs (or the entire sector). Meanwhile, thanks to rising costs of living and humanities degrees, fewer people are entering the workforce to begin with, and they’re applying for fewer jobs – with literary organisations shrinking, pausing, merging or even shutting down.