ABIA, Age winners; bookseller survey; industry hopes after the election; VIPs’ Australian expectations
Across the industry this week, BookPeople CEO Robbie Egan spoke with B+P about the cross-Tasman survey designed to provide data about booksellers in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, and the Australian Publishers Association noted the Federal Election results bring funding hope to the industry. Adalya Nash Hussein, the 2025 Kat Muscat Fellow, announced the creation of Loom Literary Journal, a new national interdisciplinary journal that will ‘work in conversation with non-textual artistic mediums’; and participants of Creative Australia’s Visiting International Publishers Program (VIPs) spoke to B+P about their upcoming trip to Australia.
In the Conversation this week, academic Allanah Hunt detailed the nuances and difficulties of working as a sensitivity reader, saying ‘we have a responsibility to ensure truth-telling in all that we do and create more unbiased representations of Indigenous peoples that celebrate our resilience and culture’. And, in the midst of writers’ festival season, Daniel Lavery wrote about the narrative surrounding festival participation and storytelling in general – questioning whether the industry needs to emphasise the ‘power of storytelling’ as much as it does.
An abundance of awards were announced this week, beginning with the 2025 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) on 7 May, which saw The Voice Inside (John Farnham with Poppy Stockell, Hachette) take out the overall Book of the Year award along with two other categories. The following evening, the winners of the 2025 Age Book of the Year awards were announced as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival opening night. The Wheeler Centre celebrated the 22 writers who won a 2025 Hot Desk Fellowship; five writers were shortlisted for the Emerging Writers’ Festival’s Speculate Prize; and, last but not least, the Fogarty Literary Award, a competition for Western Australian writers aged between 18 and 35, announced a shortlist.
The University of Queensland Press (UQP) also announced a new mentorship opportunity for under-represented writers – which will include a residency, stipend, professional development and mentorship, and UQP will consider the final manuscript with an option to publish.
In acquisitions, Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins Australia, acquired world rights to Trent Dalton’s new novel, Gravity Let Me Go; Pantera Press acquired ANZ rights for Holden Sheppard’s second adult novel, Yeah the Boys, which will expand the ‘Sheppardverse’; and Echo Publishing acquired Tim Ayliffe’s first standalone crime novel. In children’s acquisitions, Larrikin House acquired world rights to both Robo-teacher, written by Charlotte Barkla, and Ultra Violet, Escape From Uranus, written by Cristy Burne and illustrated by Rebel Challenger; and Penguin Random House Australia also announced the forthcoming special edition publication of Bluey: The Sign.
In international news, the Trump administration fired both Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden (with Publishers Weekly reporting ‘no reason for Hayden’s removal was provided’) and US Copyright Office director Shira Perlmutter; Canisia Lubrin won the 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for her novel Code Noir (Soft Skull); and the British Book Awards announced Patriot by Alexei Navalny as the 2025 Book of the Year, alongside other winners.
Elsewhere in bookish news, dating app Hinge has launched the ‘No Ordinary Love’ campaign, which will feature an anthology of romance stories on Substack, where ‘contemporary writers Upasna Barath, Hunter Harris, William Rayfet Hunter, Tomasz Jedrowski, and Jen Winston [are] paired with five Hinge couples to retell key moments of their love story’, with a foreword by Roxane Gay. Also in romance, in a blog post, Brianna Di Monda interrogated AI romance, fanfic crossing into mainstream publishing, and the value of literary works today.
UK-based military family charity Reading Force was profiled in Book Brunch this week, highlighting their aim of ‘promoting the importance of male reading role models’, while Book Brunch also reported on the launch of the Bee, a literary magazine for working class writers.
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Category: This week’s news
