ABA conference program, Readings Children’s Book Prize winner

The program for this year’s Australian Booksellers Association conference, to be held in person and online from 20–22 June at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne, has been announced.

In awards news, Penny Tangey’s middle-grade novel As Fast as I Can (UQP) has won the 2021 Readings Children’s Book Prize. Arnold Zable has been honoured with the Australia Council’s Lifetime Achievement in Literature, while this year’s ABIA business awards shortlists and the inductees into the ABIA Hall of Fame have been announced. Four Australians and one New Zealander are among the finalists for the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and the recipient of the Creative NZ Louis Johnson New Writer’s Bursary was announced this week.

Overseas, this year’s London Book Fair will run as digital-only event, the organisers of the Rathbones Folio Prize revealed they lost £30,000 prize money to a cyber scam, and the shortlist for the 2021 Jhalak Prize for BAME writers was announced.

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Category: This week’s news