New leaf
Handpicked
Written by Siang Tay
Published by HarperCollins, Fourth Estate
$27.99
The debut novel, Handpicked, by UniSA’s own professional staff member Siang Tay was launched just this month and is set to do well.
In 2007 Tay won the HarperCollins Varuna Award for Manuscript Development which led to the publication of the novel.
This is a gentle and sensitive story about the relationship journey between a Malaysian mail order bride, Laila, and her Australian husband Jim, a Riverland fruit picker.
In the telling of their story the work explores themes of expectation and disappointment, honesty and deception, material and emotional values. The characters are well drawn and Tay’s exploration of Australian culture through Laila’s eyes is fresh and at times salutary.
Set substantially in the regional SA community of Renmark, Tay’s descriptions of the natural environment are full and evocative.
Despite his shortcomings as a very ordinary Australian man - a beer, football and mates kind of character - Tay’s portrayal of Jim manages to remain respectful and ultimately sympathetic.
The book is accessible and at the same time has enough meat to keep you thinking and learning about relationships along with its characters.
You can see more about the new book at www.siewsiangtay.com
Fostering Creativity – A Diagnostic Approach for Higher Education
and Organizations
David Cropley (Defence and Systems Institute, UniSA) and Arthur
Cropley (Hamburg University).
Hampton Press, INC, Cresskill, NJ
Innovation is universally recognised as a key component of first world economies that is vital for continued prosperity.
Innovation is driven by the generation of effective novelty - in other words, creativity. However, both in higher education and also in business and industry, insufficient effort is being made to encourage and develop creativity, with negative consequences for innovation.
This is partly due to inadequate understanding of what creativity is and how it can be fostered.
Fostering Creativity - A Diagnostic Approach for Higher Education and Organizations, draws on complementary views of creativity and innovation - as a business process and as a social-psychological process - to create a more detailed and more highly differentiated model which is capable of serving as a practical foundation for diagnosing, analysing, optimising and fostering creativity and innovation in a variety of organisational settings.
The book is built around a large number of case studies and down-to-earth examples, and offers many concrete suggestions for fostering what the authors call functional creativity.