I'm very familiar with Bryce and Colleen's work, but not the others.. how wonderful to have some new people to read.

AS ONE of those increasingly rare letter writers who eschews email, David Malouf still queues in the post office and thinks carefully about which stamp to put on his envelope.

Now he can choose a 55-cent stamp with his face on it, though he says modesty will stop him.

Malouf is one of six novelists featured on the latest Australian Legends set of stamps, which Australia Post releases today.

He is joined by Peter Carey, Bryce Courtenay, Thomas Keneally, Colleen McCullough and Tim Winton - a group of Australia's most prolific, most popular, most awarded and mostly grey-haired authors.

''Stamps aren't what they used to be,'' joked Courtenay, who was born in South Africa. ''It was the king's head on stamps when I was young. Now they just put old shitbags on them.''

Sir Donald Bradman was the first living non-royal to appear on Australian stamps when the Australian Legends Awards were launched in 1997 ''to honour individuals who have made a lifetime contribution to the development of our national identity and character''.

Since then athletes, Anzacs, racing figures, fashion designers and actors have qualified.

Carey, the winner of Britain's Man Booker Prize for Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang, considers the honour ''moving'' and flew from his New York home to Melbourne for today's awards lunch.

''There's a big part of me that really wants to be part of Australian culture," he said.

Keneally, the author of more than 40 works, recalled writers of the 1960s such as Patrick White, Kenneth Slessor and Judith Wright who ''were better in many ways than all of us being honoured but were not considered central to the community.

''So it's astonishing that writers should be considered fit objects for national inclusion. On the other hand, there are many brilliant writers who are not there. There's no poet. So it is with a certain chastened conceitedness that we accept.''

Each writer has two stamps: one with a new photograph and the other with a younger image.

Malouf thinks he looks like the ancient Roman writer Seneca in his youthful portrait, which was shot in 1979 by an Italian photographer friend, Carlo Olivieri. He had written his first novel, Johnno, at Olivieri's apartment in Rome a few years earlier and dedicated it to him.

''I'm glad they are self-adhesive because it prevents jokes about licking their backside,'' Keneally said.