PANZ withdraws as Bologna Guest of Honour, King’s Birthday Honours announced, 2025 DANZ award winners revealed
The Publishers Association of New Zealand/Te Rau o Tākupu (PANZ) has withdrawn its commitment to be the Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2027 Country Guest of Honour, ‘due to lack of committed support from government agencies and other potential funders’, said the organisation this week.
In other local news, Ali Green was appointed chair of the Story Factory board, replacing Gemma Salteri; Fremantle Press launched its 2025 Books for Little Bookaburras program; Q-Lit Festival released its 2025 program; Byron Writers Festival also announced their 2025 program; and Creative Australia launched the Creative Workplaces website.
Among recipients of this year’s King’s Birthday Honours in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand are several authors and industry figures including Julia Marshall, David Paul Burton, Morrin Jackson Rout, JM Coetzee, Ambrose Mungala Chalarimeri, Kirstie Clements, Jim Connelly, Jane Frances Crawley, Gary Crew, Roz Greenwood, Ivor Indyk, Garth Nix and Bernard James Whimpress.
The 2025 Diversity in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (DANZ) Children’s Book Award winners include works by Remy Lai, Victor Steffensen and Sandra Steffensen, Eileen Merriman, and 52 Pasifika student authors; and shortlists for the 2025 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults have been announced.
Also in awards news, Creative Australia this week announced recipients of the Marten Bequest Scholarships, Dal Stivens Award and Kathleen Mitchell Award; Writers Victoria announced the recipients of the 13th round of the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund; while Varuna announced 12 recipients of its 2025 First Nations Fellowships; Angela Slatter is the 2025 Hedberg Writer-in-Residence; the First Nations Writers Festival announced its book and short story award winners; Ava Reid won the 2025 Landfall Tauraka Young Writers’ Essay Prize; and the shortlist for the 2025 Deep Creek Residency Fellowship was also released.
Further afield, the 2025 Jhalak Prize winners have been announced; and Bernadine Evaristo won a one-off Outstanding Contribution Award, presented by the UK Women’s Prize.
In local acquisitions news this week, Allen & Unwin Aotearoa New Zealand acquired world rights to Good Things Come and Go by Josie Shapiro; Summit Books acquired ANZ rights to Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray, via Grace Heifetz at a4 Literary; Atria Books Australia acquired world rights to Hate You to Love You by Joshua Hortinela in a two-book deal, via Daniel Pilkington at The Pilkington Agency; and Transit Lounge acquired world rights to The Phantom Surrealist by Geoffrey Gates.
Elsewhere on the literary internet, Terri-ann White wrote for Griffith Review on the state of Australian publishing: ‘We need new methods to get books of substance into the hands of readers.’ And English thriller writer and journalist Frederick Forsyth has died at 86.
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Category: This week’s news
