You can’t understand Australian publishing without knowing about Diana Gribble. She came to publishing almost by accident. Born in 1942, she grew up in a boisterous, supportive family where the key idea was to chip in. As a child she contracted rheumatoid arthritis. The year of school she missed may have seeded her love of reading. She dropped out of architecture at the University of Melbourne when she had a recurrence of the illness. Perhaps abandoning her profession allowed her to find her vocation. She would invent herself as she went along. She once told me that she had never really imagined herself as a book publisher at all but always wanted to start a newspaper. Fulfilling that ambition lay in the future.

This is a syndicated post. Read the original at Publisher Diana Gribble nurtured literary talent.