Among the many Centenary of Canberra offerings next year, one of the most enduring will be a collection celebrating 100 years of writing by Canberra authors.
After months of scouring hundreds of books, deliberating, sifting and weighing up, the project is nearing completion, but there's a small hitch - it's a few thousand dollars short of its target.
Which is where the wonders of technology come into play, a solution that would have amazed any writer around at the time of Canberra's beginnings.
Editor of the anthology, titled The Invisible Thread, Canberra writer Irma Gold has begun a fundraising campaign on a crowd-funding site on the internet and is hoping to reach the $5000 target by September 9.
''We are calling for donations via Pozible, an Australian crowd-funding site that many arts organisations are using,'' she said.
''Every donation, small and large, helps and there are rewards on offer, including advance copies of The Invisible Thread and VIP invitations to forthcoming events.''
The anthology is an official publication of the National Year of Reading 2012 and the Centenary of Canberra 2013, and will be published by local publisher Halstead Press in October.
It contains short stories, essays, poetry, novel extracts and non-fiction by 75 writers including Marion Halligan, A.D. Hope, Judith Wright, Kate Grenville, Bill Gammage, Roger McDonald, David Campbell, Jackie French, Humphrey McQueen, Jack Heath, Rosemary Dobson, Clive Hamilton, Manning Clark, Dorothy Johnston, Geoff Page and Alan Gould.
Also included are many significant writers who worked in Canberra briefly, for example, the poet Les Murray, novelists Alex Miller and Garth Nix, and novelist/biographer Blanche d'Alpuget.
Since the campaign began, $2005 has been pledged, but with only 36 days to go Ms Gold is hoping the public will respond generously. Donations can be made at pozible.com/centenary.
