Lewis, Daut win James Tait Black prizes
Tuesday, 2 June 2026
In the UK, Shady Lewis and Marlene L Daut have been awarded the James Tait Black Prizes for fiction and biography, respectively. Lewis was awarded the fiction prize for the...
Allen & Unwin acquires Evonne Goolagong Cawley memoir
Tuesday, 2 June 2026
Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired world rights to Only Ever Evonne by Evonne Goolagong Cawley. In the memoir, Goolagong Cawley shares memories of her childhood in Barellan, where she grew...
Allen & Unwin acquires Zoe Foster Blake’s “Group Chat”
Monday, 1 June 2026
Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired ANZ rights to Group Chat by Zoë Foster Blake, in a deal brokered by Tara Wynne at Curtis Brown. Described by the publisher as “part...
The Dick and Joan Green Family Award for Tasmanian History 2026 shortlist announced
Monday, 1 June 2026
The shortlist for the biennial Dick and Joan Green Family Award for Tasmanian History, worth $25,000, has been announced. The works shortlisted for the award are: Umarrah & George: Friendship...
Pantera Press acquires “The Curator” by Jonathan Butler
Monday, 1 June 2026
Pantera Press has acquired world rights to “gripping true crime investigation” The Curator by Jonathan Butler. Part murder mystery, part queer history, and part portrait of Melbourne’s art world, the...
Local authors shortlisted for UK Dagger crime writing awards
Monday, 1 June 2026
Local authors Sam Guthrie, Laura McCluskey, and Zoë Rankin are among those whose works have been shortlisted for the UK Crime Writers’ Association’s (CWA) 2026 Dagger Awards. The authors were...
Aotearoa New Zealand 2026 Book Industry Awards finalists announced
Monday, 1 June 2026
The finalists in Aotearoa New Zealand’s 2026 Book Industry Awards, presented by Booksellers Aotearoa NZ and the Publishers Association of New Zealand Te Rau o Tākupu (PANZ), have been announced....
DANZ Children’s Book Award 2026 shortlists announced
Monday, 1 June 2026
The 2026 shortlists for the DANZ (Diversity in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand) Children’s Book Award have been announced by the Australian School Library Association (ASLA). Chosen from previously announced longlists,...
Simon & Schuster acquires Vasiliou’s “Better Man”
Thursday, 28 May 2026
Simon & Schuster Australia (S&S) has acquired world rights to Better Man by Ben Vasiliou, in a deal negotiated by Daniel Pilkington of The Pilkington Agency. The “practical guide to...
ABC Radio National countdown to focus on Australian books
Thursday, 28 May 2026
This year, ABC Radio National’s annual Top 100 Books Countdown will focus on the theme “Australian books”, both fiction and nonfiction. The ABC said the countdown’s definition of Australian was...
NT Writers Festival 2026 festival opens
Thursday, 28 May 2026
The NT Writers Festival will return to Garramilla/Darwin today, running from 28 to 31 May under the theme “Navigating”. Panels, workshops and conversations will include appearances by writers Omar Musa,...
Pink Shorts Press acquires Ball’s “A Map and Other Parts”
Thursday, 28 May 2026
Pink Shorts Press has acquired world rights to Timmah Ball’s A Map and Other Parts. The publisher described the work as “a poetic interrogation of Australia’s relationship with the built...
Simon & Schuster acquires three Hammer novels
Thursday, 28 May 2026
Simon & Schuster Australia (S&S) imprint Summit Books has acquired ANZ rights to 3 novels by Chris Hammer from Grace Heifetz at a4 Literary, with UK rights sold to Rachel...
Bancroft receives 2026 Red Ochre Award for lifetime achievement
Thursday, 28 May 2026
Bundjalung writer and artist Bronwyn Bancroft is one of the recipients of the 2026 Red Ochre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Artistic Excellence in the First Nations Arts and Culture...
Allen & Unwin acquires Wills’s “Dopamining”
Wednesday, 27 May 2026
Allen and Unwin (A&U) has acquired ANZ rights to Dopamining by Samantha Wills, via Samuel Bernard at Zeitgeist Agency. Part memoir and part cultural commentary, Dopamining examines “how we became...
ALS Gold Medal 2026 shortlist announced
Wednesday, 27 May 2026
The shortlist for the 2026 ALS Gold Medal, awarded by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, has been announced. The shortlisted works are: Discipline (Randa Abdel-Fattah, University of...
Vale Neale Daniher
Wednesday, 27 May 2026
Australian Rules football player, author and co-founder of FightMND, Neale Daniher, has died, aged 65. Pan Macmillan Australia writes: Pan Macmillan Australia is deeply saddened by the passing of AFL...
A win for illustrated books all round: Thames & Hudson celebrates with “another reprint on top of the reprint”
Wednesday, 27 May 2026
Once I Was a Giant (Zeno Sworder) was shortlisted in this year’s CBCA awards ahead of its overall win as Book of the Year at last week’s Australian Book Industry...
“My parents made a brilliant decision … to choose a bookseller as our godmother”: Zeno Sworder on winning ABIA Book of the Year
Wednesday, 27 May 2026
A heartfelt thank you to ABIA and Australian booksellers and publishers for this honour and for the valuable work that you do. My parents made a brilliant decision before my...
Riveted Press acquires Sandhu middle-grade fiction
Wednesday, 27 May 2026
Riveted Press has acquired world rights to Khet and the Medallion of Ra by Jo Sandhu, via a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Queensland pitch event. The...
Miles Franklin longlist; ABIA winners; record-breaking SWF
Wednesday, 27 May 2026
Sydney Writers’ Festival and Auckland Writers Festival Waituhi o Tāmaki each reported box office record-breaking years for the 2026 festival (and shared their bestsellers); while Melbourne Writers Festival reported attendance...
ABIA 2026 lost & found
Wednesday, 27 May 2026
A few items were left behind at the Australian Book Industry Awards on Thursday, 21 May. If you think something might belong to you, we would love to help reunite...
A Funny Thing Happened…with Robbie Swan and Fiona Patten
Wednesday, 27 May 2026
A sharp, darkly funny insider account of the sex industry’s collision with politics, censorship and everyday Australian life by Robbie Swan, a former national magazine editor turned political lobbyist for...
Account manager, Queensland
Wednesday, 27 May 2026
Penguin Random House We are seeking a full-time Account Manager to join our sales team in Brisbane. Reporting to the Field Sales Manager, you will maximise book sales across selected...
When the World Sleeps (Francesca Albanese, Hardie Grant)
Tuesday, 26 May 2026
Francesca Albanese, the first woman to serve as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, conveys the soul of a people through ten unforgettable stories of resilience and...
Allen & Unwin acquires James’s “The Wreck”
Tuesday, 26 May 2026
Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired ANZ rights to crime novel The Wreck by Riley James in a deal brokered by Caitlan Cooper-Trent of Curtis Brown Australia. In 1998, researchers...
Story Factory opens Bidwill centre
Monday, 25 May 2026
Creative writing not-for-profit Story Factory has opened a new centre in the western Sydney suburb of Bidwill, New South Wales. Having previously established centres in Redfern and Parramatta, the Story...
Sworder wins ABIA Book of the Year
Thursday, 21 May 2026
The winners of the 2026 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) have been announced, with Once I Was a Giant by Zeno Sworder (Thames & Hudson) taking out the overall Book...
Tax offsets, GST reductions, solutions to “theft of Australian authors’ work”: industry bodies’ submissions to next National Cultural Policy
Thursday, 21 May 2026
As this Sunday’s deadline for submissions to the next National Cultural Policy approaches, Writing Australia and other industry bodies are calling on those in the publishing sector to shape the...
“Taiwan Travelogue” wins 2026 International Booker Prize
Wednesday, 20 May 2026
Taiwanese author Yáng Shuāng-zǐ has won the 2026 International Booker Prize, worth £50,000 (A$94,300) for Taiwan Travelogue (translated by Lin King, Scribe), reported the Bookseller. The International Booker Prize is awarded...
