Creative Australia announces funded projects; Writers Victoria petition launches; APA releases ABIA guide
Among these week’s headlines, literature organisations and individuals around Australia received a total of $10.6 million for 212 projects in Creative Australia’s latest funding round; Writers Victoria launched a petition to restore its funding after it was refused multi-year support in the latest Creative Victoria funding round; and the new Adelaide Festival board has invited Randa Abdel-Fattah to speak at next year’s Adelaide Writers’ Week amid claims of free speech hypocrisy.
More local news
Tash Besliev and Cate Blake were promoted into newly created positions at Simon & Schuster (S&S) Australia and New Zealand; Finley Japp was appointed director of the Mildura Writers Festival, replacing co-founder Donata Carazza, who has been director for the past 5 years; and bookseller Lindy Jones retired from Abbey’s Bookshop after 25 years.
Writing Australia, the literary arm of Creative Australia, announced the participants of the North America Publishers’ Program; and Creative Workplaces launched the Creative Workplaces Survey, a national research project to build the first comprehensive picture of working conditions across Australia’s creative industries.
Meanwhile, the Australian Publishers Association released a guide for publishers entering the 2026 Australian Book Industry Awards.
Acquisitions
Wiley acquired world rights to Caitlin Judd’s nonfiction title Good Girl, Goodbye: Rewrite Your Story, Reclaim Your Power, Build a Life You Love; and Allen & Unwin acquired world rights to a book based on the television documentary series The First Inventors, to be authored by series writer and director Larissa Behrendt, alongside Billy Griffiths and Sean Ulm.
International news
In the UK, the winners of the Nero Book Awards were announced; and Hachette UK and community-driven digital platform Libraro have launched a “reader-led” prize to “discover the next big English-language fiction author”.
Meanwhile, in the US, the Association of American Publishers announced that educational publisher Cengage Group and Hachette Book Group have moved to represent publishers in a major class action against Google’s use of copyright material for its generative AI; and Literary Hub (LH) published a list of the best US book covers of the past decade, as chosen by designers.
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Category: This week’s news
