News sections | Books+Publishing

RWA awards 2020 winners announced

Wednesday, 26 August 2020
The winners of the 2020 Romance Writers of Australia (RWA) Romantic Book of the Year awards, known as the Ruby Awards, have been announced. The winners include: Contemporary romance The...

Affirm acquires Williams’ ‘The Bookbinder of Jericho’

Tuesday, 25 August 2020
Affirm Press has acquired Pip Williams' second novel The Bookbinder of Jericho, set in the same world as her bestselling debut The Dictionary of Lost Words. The Bookbinder of Jericho...

Readings announces 2020 New Australian Fiction Prize shortlist

Tuesday, 25 August 2020
Readings has announced the shortlist for its 2020 New Australian Fiction Prize. The shortlisted books are: The Animals In That Country (Laura Jean McKay, Scribe) Dolores (Lauren Aimee Curtis, W&N)...

Ellmann, Szirtes win James Tait Black prizes

Monday, 24 August 2020
In the UK, Lucy Ellmann and George Szirtes have won the James Tait Black prizes for fiction and biography respectively. Ellmann won the fiction prize for her novel Ducks, Newburyport...

Epstein’s ‘Small Spaces’ optioned for film

Monday, 24 August 2020
Small Spaces (Sarah Epstein, Walker Books) has been optioned for film by Triptych Pictures and US producer Rebecca Green via Alex Adsett. Triptych produced feature film The Babadook and TV...

Read the latest Publishers Weekly

Monday, 24 August 2020
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. This week's features include: 'A...

Magabala announces fellowship for mid-career writers

Friday, 21 August 2020
Magabala Books has launched a new fellowship for mid-career First Nations writers and storytellers, worth $10,000. The Magabala Fellowship, supported by the Serp Hills Foundation, is open to Aboriginal and...

ILF to hold Indigenous Literacy Day YouTube event

Thursday, 20 August 2020
This year, in lieu of its usual celebration at the Sydney Opera House, the Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) will post a 45-minute 'visual event' on its YouTube channel to celebrate...

Synchronicity Australia options FitzGerald’s ‘Ash Mountain’ for screen

Wednesday, 19 August 2020
Synchronicity Australia, the new Melbourne-based arm of Glasgow production company Synchronicity Films, has acquired screen rights to Helen FitzGerald's forthcoming novel Ash Mountain (Affirm, March 2021). Affirm Press described Ash Mountain...

Rights round-up

Wednesday, 19 August 2020
Sales Fiction Echo Publishing has sold German rights to Resurrection Bay, And Fire Came Down and Darkness for Light (all Emma Viskic) to Piper. HarperCollins has sold Vietnamese and Korean...

Ali Cobby Eckermann on the necessity of writing

Wednesday, 19 August 2020
'My decision to share my personal story through literature has been paramount to my emotional and holistic health, the cathartic telling guided by many senior healers and law-holders from my...

Rural Dreams (Margaret Hickey, MidnightSun)

Wednesday, 19 August 2020
Rural Dreams, like its name implies, is a short story collection deeply rooted in country Australia. Reading it you can practically smell the dry grass, eucalyptus and stale pub carpet....

Future Girl (Asphyxia, A&U)

Wednesday, 19 August 2020
The events of Future Girl play out in a future Melbourne that is eerily plausible. Food has been largely replaced by recon, an all-in-one food replacement that is marketed as...

A Letter to Layla: Travels to our deep past and near future (Ramona Koval, Text)

Wednesday, 19 August 2020
Ramona Koval’s latest book is really a quest story: in it she sets out to find how humanity got to where we are now, and where we are going. In...

Aussie STEM Stars: Fiona Wood (Cristy Burne, Wild Dingo Press)

Wednesday, 19 August 2020
‘Aussie STEM Stars’ is an exciting new narrative nonfiction series that celebrates experts in the fields of science, maths, engineering and technology. Book one centres on the story of Fiona...

Vale Noel Hammond

Wednesday, 19 August 2020
Murdoch Books and Allen & Unwin national business development manager Noel Hammond has died. Allen & Unwin writes: It is with great sadness that Murdoch Books and Allen & Unwin...

Fed govt to propose copyright reforms, Williams appointed interim SWF artistic director

Wednesday, 19 August 2020
The federal government will propose reforms to Australia’s copyright laws in exposure draft legislation it expects to release later this year, and former Wheeler Centre director Michael Williams has been...

Transit Lounge acquires Papathanasiou’s ‘The Stoning’

Wednesday, 19 August 2020
Transit Lounge has acquired world English rights to debut crime fiction novel The Stoning by Peter Papathanasiou, via Martin Shaw from Shaw Literary. Canberra-based Papathanasiou, who published his memoir Little...

Kamaleddine’s ‘The Truth About Luck’ wins inaugural Matilda Children’s Literature Prize

Tuesday, 18 August 2020
Samera Kamaleddine has won HarperCollins Australia’s inaugural Matilda Children’s Literature Prize for her YA manuscript The Truth About Luck. Kamaleddine’s novel tells the story of a 16-year-old Lebanese–Australian Layla Karimi,...