Indies winners announced, SWF program released, Open Book expands
The program for the 2023 Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF), which runs 22–28 May, has been announced, as has a draft of program for the 2023 a BookPeople conference and trade exhibition, to be held on 18–19 June in Adelaide. Meanwhile, this year’s Adelaide Writers’ Week (AWW) drew over 17,000 people to the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden from 4–9 March.
The Open Book: Australian Publishing Internship program, which ran as a pilot program offering two internships in 2022, has expanded to offer three paid internships this year, with one an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander identified role. A new book review website, the Aotearoa NZ Review of Books (ANZRB), will be launched on 22 March, according to New Zealand Society of Authors Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa.
In awards news, Runt by Craig Silvey (Allen & Unwin) has been named Book of the Year at the 2023 Indie Book Awards, which were announced on Monday 20 March; Wiradjuri writer and filmmaker Edoardo Crismani has been awarded this year’s Boundless Indigenous Writer’s Mentorship for the manuscript ‘Finding Billy Brown’ and will be mentored by Wiradjuri author Tara June Winch; and Sarah Holland-Batt’s poetry collection The Jaguar (UQP) has been longlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize, worth C$130,000 (A$142,700).
Overseas, French media company Vivendi is in exclusive negotiations for the 100% takeover of its subsidiary Editis—France’s second largest publisher—by International Media Invest (IMI), while in the US, a federal judge is due to hear cross motions for summary judgement in a lawsuit challenging the legality of the Internet Archive’s program to scan and lend print library books.
Category: This week’s news
