The Australia Council for the Arts will host a roundtable discussion on the study of Australian literature in schools and universities on Tuesday 7 August.

Twenty eminent Australian authors, publishers, teachers, academics and other stakeholders will be involved in the roundtable discussion, including The Hon Bob Carr, Prof Elizabeth Webby, Prof David Carter, Nicholas Jose and Dr Jeremy Fisher.

The roundtable will be held in Canberra and chaired by the Australia Council Literature Board chair Dr Imre Salusinszky. A statement will be released following the meeting.

Australia Council chief executive officer Kathy Keele said that profiling Australian literature throughout the education system was vital to a thriving literary culture.

‘The Australian Literature in Education roundtable will discuss how to get more Australian contemporary and classic writing onto our high school and university curricula, and how to get students studying them in greater depth,’ she said.

‘We hope that it will be the beginning of a conversation about our national literature and its place on education curricula. From the day, we aim to develop a consensus on the ways to advance this agenda and some recommendations for future action.

‘Our education institutions are the key to more Australians having a more sophisticated understanding of their own national literature,’ Ms Keele said.

The twenty participants in the roundtable are: Dr Imre Salusinszky (chair), Dr Peter Holbrook (deputy chair), The Honourable Bob Carr, Professor David Carter, Peter Craven, Professor Robert Dixon, Dr Kevin Donnelly, Josie Emery, Dr Jeremy Fisher, Dr Sarah Golsby-Smith, Emeritus Professor Laurie Hergenhan AO, Michael Heyward, John Hughes, Nicholas Jose, Dr Bronwyn Lea, Sophie Masson, Peter Pierce, Robert Sessions, Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Webby AM and Elizabeth Weiss.