Tasmania Reads Week

Mark your calendar for a week of reading as part of the Tasmania Reads Week campaign. Sue McKerracher, Executive Director of Libraries Tasmania, is a guest blogger and introduces the event and provides tips to help you immerse yourself in books.

From 5-11 March, we’ll be celebrating Tasmania Reads Week. This new statewide campaign is run by Libraries Tasmania and brings together an impressive line-up of supporters, including local booksellers, publishers, award-winning authors and illustrators, the JackJumpers, Metro buses, libraries, schools, UTAS and the Governor of Tasmania.

While Tasmania Reads Week is new, we’re building on an existing national program called Australia Reads. This annual book industry activity emerged from the National Year of Reading back in 2012 and has gone through several iterations. It is now an ‘always-on’ campaign to promote Australian books and reading, with an anchor event on 9 March – the Australian Reading Hour.

Sustaining an ‘always-on’ campaign takes far more resources than we have available, so we’re concentrating our efforts on one week of the year and building our program around the Australian Reading Hour. 

There’s a free magazine available in schools, libraries and bookshops. If you don’t manage to scoop up one of the 20,000 print copies in circulation, you can look at it online here. This gives you a full overview of what’s happening during Tasmania Reads Week and let’s you know how you can take part.

It’s not too late to run an event for the week. You might gather a few people to talk about books, or you could share a post about what you’re reading for the Week on social media. Just tag the campaign #TasmaniaReads.  If you’re in a school, we have a pack with ideas for students from kinder to Year 12 (email us for a copy Libraries Tasmania - Tasmania Reads (tasmania.reads@libraries.tas.gov.au). And if you don’t have time to do anything in 2023, put a note in your calendar for the same time next year, when we’re planning to run another week-long celebration of all things books and reading.

Sue McKerracher

Executive Director, Libraries Tasmania