Independent Bookshops Are Like a 'Seed Vault'

Shelf Awareness

"In thinking about tonight, and Australia's independent booksellers, it struck me that you are like that seed vault. You are storehouses for the kernels not only of our literary culture but our history, our music, our food culture, our health and legal and technological culture, our visual arts, our politics. You are the safety vault for the seeds of our country's cultural and intellectual life, and your customers are the spreaders of those seeds out in the world.

"A few years ago, the outlook for our independent bookselling scene looked gloomy. But like those seeds packed into the cold mountain in Norway, you have survived, you are thriving, and because of your noticing and care, your love of words and your determination to flourish, you have kept Australian literature and our culture alive and thriving too."

--Charlotte Wood, author of The Natural Way of Things, in her acceptance speech as winner of the fiction and overall Book of the Year prizes at the 2016 Australian Indie Book Awards