A Charles Sturt University (CSU) academic is a member of this year's Australian Literary Society (ALS) Gold Medal judging panel.Adjunct senior lecturer in the CSU School of Humanities and Social Sciences in Wagga Wagga Mr David Gilbey (pictured) said he was delighted to have been invited onto the panel to confer this year's ALS Gold Medal for Australian Literature.The panel's convenor is Dr Bill Ashcroft (UNSW), who has written widely on post-colonial literature and the Sacred. Other members of the 2017 ALS judging panel are Dr Bernadette Brennan (formerly of Sydney University) who has written on Brian Castro and Helen Garner; and poet and CSU academic Mr David Gilbey.The ALS Gold Medal is awarded under the patronage of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) which exists to promote the study, discussion and creation of Australian writing. Many significant Australian authors have won the ALS Gold Medal including Patrick White, AD Hope, and Mary Gilmore."I have been impressed with the variety, depth and imaginative complexity of the 45 books in a range of genres that were nominated for the 2017 award," Mr Gilbey said.In other news, a new writer-in-residence at Booranga Writers' Centre at CSU in Wagga Wagga has been announced.Mr Gilbey said, "I'm also delighted that author, Rajith Savanadasa, is the first writer-in-residence at the Booranga Writers' Centre in Wagga Wagga for 2017. I think his book Ruins is a brilliant first novel. Ruins is set in Colombo and I thought the background political struggles in Sri Lanka and some of the tensions between Buddhism and Hinduism were worked into the language of the novel convincingly. I loved the novel's narrative subtlety."