Mark Rubbo
Mark Rubbo is currently Chairman of Readings; he retired from active bookselling in August last year after starting his career at the Melbourne University Bookroom in 1970. He is a past President of The Bookpeople, was the founding chair of the Melbourne Writers Festival and has held board positions on a number of arts organisations, including Melbourne's Wheeler Centre. In 2009 he founded the Readings Foundation to support literacy and the arts and since its inception over $1.4 million has been donated to various community-based organisations. In 2006 he was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia, ‘for service to the community through fostering an awareness of Australian literature as a bookseller, literary critic, and promoter and supporter of Australian writers.’ In 2015 he was awarded the Lloyd O'Neill Award at the Australian Book Industry Awards. With bookseller Jaye Chin-Dusting, proprietor of the Mary Martin Bookshops, he co-hosts The Booksellers Podcast.