News sections | Books+Publishing

Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens (Shankari Chandran, Ultimo)

Tuesday, 19 October 2021
Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens immerses the reader in the microcosm of the Cinnamon Gardens Nursing Home. Against the backdrop of the heartbreaking trauma of the Sri Lankan Civil War, the...

Between the Last Oasis and the Next Mirage: Writing on Australia (Guy Rundle, MUP)

Tuesday, 19 October 2021
Guy Rundle lives off his wits. Correspondent-at-large for Crikey, a founding editor of the left-wing journal Arena, former sketch comedy show producer and famed writer of lives, Rundle produces writing...

Arts NT Varuna Fellowships announced

Tuesday, 19 October 2021
The recipients of the 2021 Arts NT Varuna Residency Fellowships have been announced. Presented in partnership with the Northern Territory government, the fellowship gives six writers from the Top End...

Aus international rights sales up by volume and value: new report

Tuesday, 19 October 2021
The Australia Council has released the results of its research into Australian international book rights sales. The original research for the report was based at Macquarie University and supported by...

Pan Mac acquires crime debut in ‘vigorously contested’ auction

Monday, 18 October 2021
Pan Macmillan has acquired ANZ rights to Judgement Day, the debut crime novel by Melbourne author Mali Cornish. The rights were acquired via Martin Shaw at Shaw Literary in a...

Read the latest Publishers Weekly

Monday, 18 October 2021
Books+Publishing is partnering with US trade news magazine Publishers Weekly to provide our subscribers with exclusive access to the weekly digital edition of PW magazine. View the edition here.

Laguna wins 2021 Colin Roderick Literary Award

Friday, 15 October 2021
Sofie Laguna has won the $20,000 Colin Roderick Literary Award and the H T Priestley Medal for her novel Infinite Splendours (A&U). Laguna’s coming-of-age story of a boy living in...

S&S acquires Weir novel

Friday, 15 October 2021
Simon & Schuster Australia (S&S) has acquired world rights to a novel set in contemporary Byron Bay, by journalist James Weir. Rights to The Hemsworth Effect—a title referencing the influence...

Hardie Grant acquires ‘Max Gawn Captain’s Diary’

Thursday, 14 October 2021
Hardie Grant has acquired world rights to Max Gawn Captain’s Diary by Melbourne Football Club captain Max Gawn, in a deal negotiated by Anthony McConville at Mac’s Sports Promotions. Gawn’s book...

Vale Eddie Jaku

Wednesday, 13 October 2021
Eddie Jaku, Holocaust survivor and author of the bestselling memoir The Happiest Man on Earth (Macmillan), has died in Sydney, aged 101. Born Abraham Jakubowicz in Germany in 1920, Jaku...

Agius to head Welbeck ANZ, NSW bookstores reopen

Wednesday, 13 October 2021
Bernadette Agius has been named as the inaugural managing director of Welbeck ANZ, while Juliet Rogers has been appointed managing director of Echo Publishing. After a long lockdown, retail in...

Vale Fergus McCulla

Wednesday, 13 October 2021
Peribo account manager Fergus McCulla has died, aged 31. McCulla was diagnosed with a rare and ultimately incurable form of rhabdomyosarcoma in October 2018. He passed away peacefully on 20...

Scribble’s ‘I am the Subway’ wins World Illustration Award

Wednesday, 13 October 2021
I am the Subway by Kim Hyo-eun, translated by Deborah Smith and published in English by Scribble, has won the professional children’s publishing category in the 2021 World Illustration Awards....

Hachette acquires Collier debut memoir

Wednesday, 13 October 2021
Hachette has acquired world rights to Inconceivable, a memoir by Alexandra Collier, in a deal brokered by Sharne McGee at Liberty Artist Management. Inconceivable chronicles Collier’s decision to join ‘the...

Buying and Selling the Poor: Inside Australia’s privatised welfare-to-work market (Siobhan O’Sullivan, Michael McGann & Mark Considine, SUP)

Tuesday, 12 October 2021
When Paul Keating put elements of Australia’s ‘welfare to work’ system out to tender in the mid-1990s, he could scarcely have imagined the system we have in place today: one...

Canticle Creek (Adrian Hyland, Ultimo)

Tuesday, 12 October 2021
When Daisy Baker’s body is discovered on her outback property the case appears to be straightforward. Daisy’s boyfriend Adam Lawson, new to the Victorian town of Canticle Creek from the...

The Long Weekend (Fiona Palmer, Hachette)

Tuesday, 12 October 2021
Four strangers meet for a weekend writing retreat in an idyllic location south of Perth. While this might sound like a familiar premise for a work of commercial fiction, the individuality of the characters, and the...

My First Book of Aussie Birds (Gordon Winch, illus by Stephen Pym, Catch a Star)

Tuesday, 12 October 2021
Bright and colourful, lively and engaging, lift-the-flap board book My First Book of Aussie Birds contains a magical menagerie of unique native birds waiting to be discovered by little hands. Much-loved author Gordon Winch,...