'FROM MY BOOKS'
Serge Liberman
Born in Russia in 1942, Serge Liberman came to Australia in 1951, where he now works as a medical practitioner.
His literary work has been widely published; he has been Editor of the Melbourne Chronicle, Associate Editor of Outrider
and Literary Editor of the Australian Jewish News;
he was also on the Editorial Committee of Outrider and the Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal.
He has contributed to many other publications and been included in anthologies in Australia and overseas.
His six short-story collections are:
•On Firmer Shores (1981)
•A Universe of Clowns (1983)
•The Life That I Have Led (1986)
•The Battered and the Redeemed (1990)
•Voices from the Corner (1999)
•Where I Stand (2008)
He has three times received the Alan Marshall Award and has also been a recipient of the NSW Premier's Literary Award.
Several of these have been set as study texts in Australian and overseas high schools and universities.
In addition, he is the compiler of A Bibliography of Australian Judaica,
a third and annotated edition of which he is currently updating.
Personal
Born 1942 - Fergana, Uzbekistan, USSR; DP camp in Germany 1946-7; Paris 1947-1951;
arrived in Melbourne 1951; medical graduate at Melbourne University 1967; hospital residencies till 1974;
now general practitioner in Brunswick.
Literary
1964 - Editor of Situations , bi-monthly journal of Melbourne University Jewish Students Society
1965 - Editor of Venture - annual journal of the National Union of Australian Jewish Students
1966 - first story published in Speculum, Medical Students' Journal
1977-1984 & 1991- 1996 - Editor of English section of bi-lingual literary journal (English & Yiddish) Melbourne Chronicle
Early 1980s - Literary Editor of Menorah: Journal of the Australian Association of Jewish Studies
1984 + - Associate (later Corresponding) Editor of Outrider: Journal of Australian Multicultural Literature
1983-85 - Executive member; then 1986-87, Vice-President of PEN Melbourne Centre and
in May Melbourne PEN Delegate to International PEN Conference in Lugano, Switzerland
Achievements in relation to PEN:
established PEN Writers' "address" or nominal centre at Toorak-South Yarra Library - idea led in time, indirectly,
to Victorian Writers Centre through committee's personnel; instituted regular public monthly readings at the Library
and combined public lectures with Amnesty International; recommended annual PEN short story competition -
led to annual Judah Waten Award, administered by Box Hill-Doncaster Library; recommended stories/competitions in daily press -
led to annual The Age short story competitions
1985-1996 - Honorary Treasurer of the Australian Jewish Historical Society; and member of Editorial Board of the
Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal; 1987 to 1998 - Literary Editor of the Australian Jewish News; 1992 to 2000 -
on Editorial Committee of Gesher: the Journal of the Victorian Council of Christians and Jews;
2006+ - Australian Editor of Matrix (Hamilton, New Zealand); Presently at work updating Bibliography of
Australasian Judaica to a third (online) edition.
Stories, editorials, translations, book reviews, weekly book columns and essays, variously historical, cultural, literary,
communal and religious in many periodicals.
Published books:
On Firmer Shores (1981)
A Universe of Clowns (1983)
The Life That I Have Led (1986)
The Battered and the Redeemed (1990)
Voices from the Corner (2000)
Where I Stand (2008)
A Bibliography of Australasian Judaica (1987; 1991; third updated edition in progress) – probable publication –
late 2009-early 2010
[On Firmer Shores, The Life That I Have Led and The Battered and the Redeemed set as study texts in assorted
Australian high schools and university English departments, along with separate stories abroad in Berkeley, Barcelona,
Israel, Perugia, Vancouver and Kent].
Awards:
Alan Marshall manuscript award for On Firmer Shores (1978); A Universe of Clowns (1979) and The Life That I Have Led (1981)
and NSW Premier's and NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission Literary Award for Ethnic Writing for A Universe of Clowns (1985);
Alan Marshall manuscript commendation for The Battered and the Redeemed (1989)
Anthologies inclusions:
Arrivals:Australian Short Story Anthology - Ed. Ann Granat (Brooks Waterloo, 1987)
Australian Writing Now. Eds. Manfred Jurgensen & Robert Anderson (Penguin), 1988
B'nai B'rith Australia and New Zealand Yearbook 1985
B'nai B'rith Australia and New Zealand Yearbook 1987
Cheating and Other Infidelities. Ed. Manfred Jurgensen (Outrider/Phoenix Publications, 1995)
The Commonwealth Review. Indian Society for Commonwealth Studies, Vol.XV, 1, 2005
Diaspora: The Australasian Experience. Ed. Cynthia vanden Driesen & Ralph Crane
Books (New Delhi, India, 2005)
Displacements 2 - Ed. Sneja Gunew (Deakin University)
Ethnic Australia - Ed. Manfred Jurgensen (Phoenix Publications, 1981)
Fathers in Writing - Eds. Ross Fitzgerald & Ken Spillman (University of Western Australia Press, 1997)
Feasts and Fasts: A Festschrift in Honour of Alan David Crown. (University of Sydney, 2005).
Forever Eve. National Council of Jewish Women.
The Greatest Game - Eds. Ross Fitzgerald & Ken Spillman (Wm Heinemann, 1988)
Here I Am: Contemporary Jewish Stories from Around the World - Eds. Marsha Lee
Berkman & Elaine Marcus Starkman (Jewish Publication Society,
Philadelphia & Jerusalem, 1998)
The Imagined City: Melbourne in the Mind of its Writers. Ed. John Arnold ( George Allen & Unwin, 1983)
Jewish Book Annual: The American Year Book of Jewish Literary Creativity, Vol.42, 1984-85
Jewish Writing from Down Under: Australia & New Zealand - Ed. Robert & Roberta Kalechofsky (Micah Publications, Massachusetts, 1984)
Jews on the Sixth Continent - Ed. W.D.Rubinstein (Allen & Unwin, 1987)
Joseph's Coat - Ed. Peter Skrzynecki (Hale & Iremonger, 1985)
Lesen und Schreiben: Literatur. Kritik.Germanistik. Festschrift fur Manfred Jurgensen zum 55.
Geburstag. Ed. Volker Wolf (Francke Verlag Tubingen und Basel, 1995)
Neighbours: Multicultural Writing of the 1980s. Ed. R.F.Holt (University of Queensland Press)
The New Writer's Survival Guide: an introduction to the craft of writing. Ed. Dianne Bates (Penguin, 1989)
Outrider: A Year of Australian Literature 90. Ed. Manfred Jurgensen (Phoenix Publications, 1990)
Pomegranates: A Century of Jewish Australian Writing - Ed. Gael Hammer (Millennium Press, 1988)
Reinventing Literacy: The Multicultural Imperative - Ed. David Myers (Phaedrus Books/Central Queensland University Press, 1995)
Shalom: Australian Jewish Stories - Ed. Nancy Keesing (2nd edition, Penguin,1988)
Storyteller: Short stories by Australian writers - Ed. Ann Granat (Brooks Waterloo)
Transgressions: Australian Writing Now- Ed. Don Anderson (Penguin)
Shmooz Down Under. Westerly - Summer issue 1996. Ed. Ron Shapiro, English Department, Nedlands, University of Western Australia
Writing about/ in/ from the South Pacific - Custom Course material in English
University of California at Berkeley (Winter 1994)
Other literary activities:
*Frequent judging of published biographies, autobiographies, local histories, short stories and essays for the
Fellowship of Australian Writers, the City of Caulfield Festival, the Australian Jewish News, and assorted universities
and schools at home and abroad
*Manuscript assessments for Australia Council Literature Board writers' grants
*Frequent manuscript assessments and literary/publishing advice to their authors - invariably gratis
*Translations of essays, stories and poems from Yiddish for English-language historical and literary journals
*Public lectures before assorted organisations at home and at literary conferences interstate and abroad on social,
historical, religious and literary themes; these including, among others:
"Yiddish Theatre in Australia" (later published in the Melbourne Chronicle and the Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal)
"Is There a Jewish Literature?" (later published in Australian Jewish News)
"Gentile Champions of Jews in Australia" (later published in W.D.Rubinstein [Ed] Jews in the Sixth Continent)
"Koheleth [Ecclesiastes] from a Secular Perspective" (later published in Gesher:
The Journal of the Victorian Society of Christians and Jews)
"Diaspora: the Jewish Perspective" (later published in anthology Diaspora: The Australian Experience, India)
* On the strength of my Bibliography of Australasian Judaica, I have served personally as a reference source by
diverse organisations and individuals, both academic and lay, in Australia and abroad engaged in researching the many fields of
Australian Judaica
*Invitations abroad for lectures and readings:
Syracuse University, Upstate New York, 1988
Barcelona, Lleida, Leon and Madrid, including Australian Embassy there on a literary tour, March 1999
Trivandrum, India, to the International Conference of the Association for the Study of Australasia in Asia, July 2004
Roorkee, India to the International Conference on Commonwealth Literature, October 2005 (as one of three authors representing
Australia at the Conference); followed by addresses and readings in New Delhi and Kharagpur.
Also literary conferences in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth, all of the above while engaged in full-time general
medical practice since March 1974.
Biographical and critical comment of my work included in:
A Bibliography of Australian Multicultural Writers. Compiled by. Sneja Gunew, Lolo
Houbein, Alexandra Karakostas-Seda and Jan Mahyuddin (1992).
A Reader's Guide to Australian Fiction by Laurie Clancy
Allen & Unwin Good Reading Guide. Ed. Robin Lucas (1990)
Australian Literature: An Historical Introduction by John McLaren
The Blackwell Companion to Jewish Culture. Ed. Glenda Abramson, Blackwell, UK, (1989)
Chosen: The Jews in Australia by Hilary Rubinstein (Allen & Unwin, 1987)
Diversity and Diversions: An Annotated Bibliography of Australian Ethnic Minority Literature - Eds Peter Lumb & Anne Hazell (1983)
Ethnic Writings in English from Australia: A Bibliography - 3rd edition, Ed. Lolo Houbein (1984)
Good Reading Guide. Ed. Helen Daniel.
Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century. Ed. Sorrel Kerbel, New York, London, 2003.
The Jews in Australia: A Thematic History, Volume 2, 1945 to the Present. William
D. Rubinstein (Heinemann, 1991)
Oxford Companion to Australian Literature by Wilde, Wooton, Andrews.
The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia by Peter Pierce (1987)
Who's Who in Australian Literature.
More substantial critical analyses of works:
*Ballyn, Susan (Barcelona)
"How Firm the Shores?" Serge Liberman and the Migrant Experience." Address presented at International
Jewish Literature Symposium, Perth, July 6-9, 1998
*Berger, Alan L. (Florida, America)
"From Theology to Morality" Post-Auschwitz Tikkun Olam in the Stories of Serge Liberman."
Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, Vol. IX, Nos 1 & 2, 1995, Pp. 104-123
*Corkhill, Annette (Qld)
...Australian Writing: Ethnic Writers 1945-1991. PhD Thesis, University of Queensland, (1994)
*Ezawa, Sokushin (Japan)
...Essay in English-language Japanese journal
*Hart, Alexander (Canada)
...Writing the Diaspora: A Bibliography and Critical Commentary on Post-Shoah English-Language Jewish Fiction in Australia,
...South Africa , and Canada (PhD dissertation, British Columbia, Canada)
*Irlicht, Sylvia (Melbourne)
...Post-World War II Jewish Australian Authors: A Historical Survey of Social, Cultural and Political Themes
...Discernible on their Writing. (BA Hons. Thesis, Monash University)
*Kahan, Yitzhak (Melbourne)
...Essays in Yiddish journals in Melbourne, New York and Mexico.
*Morera de la Vall, Elisa (Barcelona)
..."The Elusive Land of Milk and Honey" in Susan Ballyn (Ed) A Spanish Sampler of Australian Studies. Barcelona,
...Spain, Promociones y Publicaciones Universitarias, Departament de Filologia Angliesa i Alemanya, 1996, Pp.37-50.
...Essay on the writings of Serge Liberman.
*Morera de la Vall, Elisa (Barcelona)
...A Contribution to the Study of Jewish Writing in Australia. (PhD Thesis, Departament de Filologia Angliesa i
...Alemanya Barcelona, Spain., 2002)
...Biographical essay online of The Literary Encyclopedia
*Also theses and papers by:
...Tenenholz, Ruth [Haifa, Israel]. (Not yet sighted).
...Rabinowitz, Susan [New York, USA].