Pleas for the University of WA to reverse the decision to close its 84-year-old publishing house are building, with some of Australia's most famous writers joining the uproar.

A petition has reached almost 10,000 signatures and physical, written and social media protests have erupted after the university issued a memo to affected UWA Publishing staff proposing a close-down of the press in its “current form”, to be replaced with an open-source digital publishing model of academic titles only.

The Save UWA pop-up event.

As writers and readers took to social media to display their collections of UWAP titles, a Pop-Up Art Festival to Save UWAP ran on Tuesday at the university and multiple open letters circulated, signed by the likes of Helen Garner, J. M. Coetzee, Kim Scott, Thomas Keneally, Christos Tsiolkas, Melissa Lucashenko and David Malouf.

Dr Fiona Stanley AC wrote that UWAP was a “cultural and intellectual jewel in the crown of UWA” that served many academic and social agendas and put UWA on a national and international map.