NSW Literary Awards; Stella winner; Heiss resigns from UQ
Anita Heiss has announced her resignation from the University of Queensland; Penguin Random House marketing and publicity director Dot Tonkin has left the publishing house; Better Reading has appointed Natika Palka as head of marketing and growth; Boffins Books in Perth will close; Berkelouw Books Leichhardt may move instead of closing; Shelf Lovers has opened a new “pocket-sized” store in Brisbane; Judith Rossell has been selected for the Greenway writer residency; the Australian Government has combined the Public Lending Rights and Educational Lending Rights schemes; the inaugural program for the Island Readers & Writers Festival was announced; and Q-Lit has announced the program for its 2026 festival.
Awards
The winners of the 2026 NSW Literary Awards have been announced; Lee Lai has won the 2026 Stella Prize; the winners of the 2026 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards have been announced; Karen Howie Casey has won the 2026 ASA/HQ Fiction Prize; the Sydney Morning Herald has announced the Best Young Australian Novelists for 2026; the Australian Booksellers Association has announced the shortlists for its Bookseller of Year awards; Donna Fisher is the inaugural winner of the Libraro Prize; Charlotte Macdonald has won the 2026 Ernest Scott Prize for History; Chen Wang has won the 69th Blake Poetry Prize; the longlist for the 2026 Magarey Medal for Biography has been released; and the winners of the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize regional categories have been announced.
International news
In the UK, the British Book Awards blurred images of former Facebook staffer Sarah Wynn-Williams’s book Careless People; the annual workforce survey by the Bookseller Association has found rising levels of harassment of booksellers; US poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney has been awarded the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize; and the UK LitUp reading-for-pleasure program has shown significant results in improving children’s attitudes to reading.
Rights
Allen & Unwin has acquired The Most Interesting People You’ve Never Heard Of by Riley Knight and also Eleven: We Burn Them in the Sun by Christian Ryan; HarperCollins Australia has acquired The World Beneath Her Feet by Holly Ringland; and the Grandma Gogo series, written by Margot Bain and illustrated by Hiruni Kariyawasam, is being developed for television.
Features
In features this past week, Angela Glindemann speaks with 6 of this year’s Visiting International Publishers (VIPs) program participants; reviewer Nadia Heisler talks with Maria Takolander; and we bring you the latest Book Club round-up.
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Category: The week that was
