Harpercollins' Terry Kitson Bows Out Early
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday November 13, 1993
* TERRY Kitson has made an accelerated exit from the managing directorship of HarperCollins and is off to Perth. The plan had been for Kitson and his successor, Barrie Hitchon, to run Rupert's Australasian publishing arm until next March 31, Hitchon as understudy. In fact, Kitson finished up on November 5 and Hitchon had the chair to himself as of last Monday. A duumvirate, however defined, had always looked an oddity for a company where morale has been dented by the departure - for various reasons -of people like Tom Thompson, Lisa Highton and Andy Palmer. Kitson denies, with customary vigour, that the joint plan failed; it hadn't really come into force because his eyesight, long a problem, had worsened considerably during the past two months. He'll now have major surgery to both eyes, recuperate and head early next year for HarperCollins India where, with HC Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Africa, he'll maintain an long-established interest. Why Perth? He's owned a house there for years which makes sense if you check a map of all of the above.
* The good news keeps coming for Alex Miller's The Ancestor Game which won this year's Miles Franklin and has now collected the Commonwealth Writers Prize, of Pound 10,000 ($A22,000). The judges' verdict, announced in Singapore, was that Miller's book was "a radical departure in Commonwealth writing, roving beyond the more traditional concern with images of Asia in the South Pacific".
* Anson Cameron, like Alex Miller a Port Melbourne writer, has won the University of Canberra's $3,000 National Short Story Competition. Judges said his White Noise was outstanding, mature and sophisticated.
* The University of Technology is the star at Writers in the Park at 7.30 pm on Tuesday at the Harold Park Hotel. Top of the bill will be the launch of its sixth anthology, Falling Through Language. The annual UTS writing awards will also be revealed - IAN HICKS.
© 1993 Sydney Morning Herald
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