Vale Diana Gribble
Sophie Cunningham. Author and editor and former editor of Meanjin.
October 05
When I started at McPhee Gribble back in 1988, the first book idea I can remember having was that we should publish a book about cane toads (a doco on the beasts was just coming out). I had been a junior editor for approximately five minutes. I had no idea how ideas were turned into books. But instead of laughing at me Diana Gribble bought me a rubber cane toad, then suggested I give the director of Cane Toads a call and see if he was interested in a book deal. That book didn’t happen, but others did. And the cane toad is right where it’s always been – on my desk by my computer. It’s been watching over me for 25 years now.
Diana, the cofounder of McPhee Gribble (1975), Text Publishing (1990) and Private Media, the publisher of Crikey, (1993), died last night. She’d been suffering from pancreatic cancer for the last three months.
I find that I can only type terse, tight little sentences – it’s that or launch into great sentimentality. But really, however I say it, what I want people to know is this: Diana Gribble has been one of the most important people on our publishing and media landscape for the last 35 years. She was, as Crikey put it, ‘a creator. She inspired and indefatigably supported the people around her — family, friends, colleagues, authors, artists. She nurtured young talent and motivated old talent.’
Di was one of my first bosses. She helped ‘make’ me in the way that only real mentors can but was, I suspect, unaware of the depth of her influence on me. She wasn’t someone who got very sentimental or was overly invested in matters such as how others perceived her. She was direct and clear sighted in both her praise and criticism. The thing is, of course, is that Di has had this influence on hundreds of us and today we are all remembering the myriad of ways in which Di’s direction and friendship made the work we do, and thus the lives we live, possible. W H Chong describes his sense that with her passing he has lost his bearings, his compass, in this moving tribute http://blogs.crikey.com.au/culture-mulcher/2011/10/05/good-night-diana-gribble-goodbye-rest-in-peace/
It’s hard to know what else to say, so perhaps I’ll just finish with this: when Di used to laugh, she did so with all her body, she threw herself into the laugh, and her eyes would glint with girlish mischief.
Our Friends
- Alien Onion
- Ampersand Duck
- Andrew McDonald
- A Pair of Ragged Claws
- Arts Victoria
- Australia Council for the Arts
- AustLit
- Bookshow blog
- CAL
- City of Tongues
- Crikey
- darkly wise, rudely great
- David Astle
- Dorothy Johnston
- Elmo Keep Does Stuff
- The Ember
- Going Down Swinging
- Griffith Review
- Hackpacker
- Harvest
- Island
- Killings blog
- Lorraine Crescent
- Lynden Barber
- Mandy Ord
- Marcus Westbury
- Matilda
- Meanland
- Melbourne University Publishing
- Mel Campbell
- The Monthly
- Musings of an Inappropriate Woman
- Oslo Davis
- Overland
- Paul Callaghan
- Read, Think, Write
- Right Now
- Sleepers Publishing
- Sorrow at Sills Bend
- SPLOG
- The Stella Prize
- Tom Cho
- Virgule
- Wheeler Centre
Comments
06 Oct 11 at 8:52
The main thing to be thankful for is that she obviously sent a lot of amazing people out into Australian culture to carry on her work and vision. I hope you all stay true to her. What a good woman, and how much you all loved her!
...06 Oct 11 at 13:21
There was another side to Di Gribble.
...07 Oct 11 at 10:10
Stay classy, Anonymous.
...16 Oct 11 at 17:09
May I humbly add? She was a ‘product’ of Fintona Girls' School in Balwyn – a most amazing and wonderfully inspiring school for girls then as well as today. I was there from 1953 to 1965. Even in those days the girls were expected to go on to univesity and to excel. She was a role model and inspiration even then. I admired her and even though I haven’t met her for some years will miss her for a very long timne.
...23 Nov 11 at 18:23
I went to the same school as Diana Glenn. I was in Year A (senior school), aged 10, and she was in Matric and I fell in love with her. At Speech Night that year (1959) – she was leaving to go to the University of Melbourne to read Architecture – I was inconsolable. I only saw her once after that – at an Old Girls' Night – but followed her career. My sister, older than I – one year below Diana at school – knew of my passion and alerted me to Diana’s death recently. Diana was, even when I ‘knew’ her so long ago, a beautiful, fascinating, magical creature. How compassionately she spoke to me and consoled me on that Speech Night. She was/is one the major influences in my life.
...