Dr Jane Frank

University of the Sunshine Coast, School of Business and Creative Industries, Faculty Member

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Dr Jane Frank is Lecturer in Communication at University of the Sunshine Coast (UniSC). Prior to working in academia, she worked for many years as a ministerial and government speechwriter, publications manager, marketing advisor and festival administrator. Her monograph Regenerating Regional Culture: A Study of the International Book Town Movement was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018. This study of books and regional culture examines the impact of book towns in the cultural sphere as increasingly powerful sites and sources of creativity. Her research interests span communication, cultural sociology, creative writing and creative industries, particularly the ongoing significance of books and print in the Digital Age.
Phone: 438161317
Address: Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

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Papers by Dr Jane Frank

When dreams turn archaeological: The poetic dreamscapes of Anna Jacobson

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This paper explores the dream-inspired poetry and video poetry of award-winning Brisbane poet Ann... more This paper explores the dream-inspired poetry and video poetry of award-winning Brisbane poet Anna Jacobson. Jacobson’s surreal poetic narratives draw on memory, dreams, desires and destiny, using simple language and vivid imagery to evoke strong emotional responses. Her manner of exploring dreams in a number of poetic and narrative forms allows whimsical, gentle but also vigorous creative work of personal resilience and understanding. Her work is framed also by explorations of her Jewish culture and family and driven by unbridled imagination. In particular, the paper investigates Jacobson’s process of interweaving visions and memories for the purpose of tracing personal histories lost through periods of mental illness, exploring how she mines dreams for the purpose of writing and healing. It questions how her poetic process allows her to reclaim agency through unpacking experiences she wants to recover or further understand. Distilled from a series of interviews with the poet, the ...

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Stay or Go

Not Very Quiet, 2020

The King of Hay-on-Wye

The London Magazine, 2019

Milky Way of Words

Ginninderra Press, 2016

Earthing; Rearranging the Paintings after they return from your Retrospective

Grieve: Stories and Poems of Grief and Loss, 2019

Mid Life Crisis

Poem Late in the Day at a Market

The Blue Nib, 2020

Long-haul Flight after a visit to the Dali Museum

Hecate, 2016

Walking to Angourie

If I Was The Other One

NOON: journal of the short poem, 2016

One Doll Less

Not Very Quiet, 2019

Book Town

Long Haul Flight after a Visit to the Dali Museum

Sacred Objects and Magic Encyclopaedias: Books in Book Towns

Regenerating Regional Culture

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Occasional Errata: Book Towns That Fail or Falter

Amid the success of the global Book Town Movement, Frank draws attention to book towns that have ... more Amid the success of the global Book Town Movement, Frank draws attention to book towns that have not achieved sustainable outcomes. She applies A.V. (Tony) Seaton’s critical book town success factors to the failed projects of Blaenafon in Wales and Atherstone in England, as well as highlighting the case of Graiguenamanagh in the Republic of Ireland, an emergent book town experiencing financial hardship despite possessing other desirable attributes. Frank outlines a range of economic, political, social and book industry-related issues that threaten to render book town futures uncertain. The chapter examines challenges that book towns encounter in their establishment phase, but also the difficulties encountered with relation to leadership and succession with the inevitable ageing of entrepreneurs who created and sustained book towns.

Edge-of-the-Map Locations: Outposts of Sustainable Culture

Frank investigates book towns as sustainable culture-led rural regeneration projects through expl... more Frank investigates book towns as sustainable culture-led rural regeneration projects through exploring key motivations for the support of book towns by governments and development agencies as ‘edge-of-the-map’ attractions that ‘create something out of nothing’, as Landry recommends (2008). She identifies the peripherality of book towns and their distance from urban centres of culture as intrinsic to their success. Unlike in cities, entrepreneurs and booksellers can afford spacious unoccupied properties that, grouped together, create specialized book clusters. Case studies of book towns in Clunes, Australia and Sedbergh, England, are presented, demonstrating the attraction of book towns to change makers and other talented individuals as well as the culturally savvy wishing to travel to be part of literary and intellectual dialogues.

Book Towns: Expanding Literary Connections

Frank draws attention to the popularity, growing importance and expanding functions of book towns... more Frank draws attention to the popularity, growing importance and expanding functions of book towns, locating them at the intersection of a number of local and global trends that impact on consumption of book culture. She deploys the concept of book culture to foreground the intertwined relationship between books, collecting, themed communities and specialized tourism practices that positions book towns as significant mechanisms in contemporary life for regional and cultural vitality. The chapter links a number of agendas for book town formation including European unification and UNESCO’s global creative policy-making strategies with other key factors including economic models for specialized retail clusters, the development of online organizational networks and desirability of celebrating book culture in utopian locales with a strong community dynamic.

Book Towns: An Unfolding Story

Frank concludes her study of the international Book Town Movement by arguing that while urban cen... more Frank concludes her study of the international Book Town Movement by arguing that while urban centres play an important role in contemporary print culture, and more broadly in cultural life, that the ways in which people engage with arts and cultural debates are in a process of transformation. Less conventional spaces on the periphery—book towns—are emerging as vital hubs of artistic creation, festival culture and consumption. Fundamental to this shift, Frank argues, is that book towns are both linking mechanisms and symbolic entities, and the book a device that synthesizes aspects of our culture and history: the places where we live, our understandings of ourselves, our cultural industries that bring vitality. Frank argues that book towns will continue to fulfil important social, cultural and economic needs in society.