Meanjin literary journal to close ‘on financial grounds’, NSW History Award winners revealed, Anthropic settles book piracy lawsuit
In a move roundly condemned by industry figures and other publications, Melbourne University Publishing shuttered 85-year-old literary journal Meanjin last Thursday ‘on financial grounds’. This was followed by a brief update on the journal’s social media pages, indicating that the full archive will be made available online from February next year, alongside administrative updates for current subscribers, but with no further context on the decision beyond the original brief statements offered by the publisher and the university.
Also finishing up is the Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship, which has supported twenty biographers in research and travel. The final fellowship will be presented in March 2026.
In brighter news, Magabala Books and the Blak & Bright festival announced the establishment of the First Stories Collective; and in Sydney, Story Factory launched its inaugural ambassador program, featuring Julia Baird, Benjamin Law, Zindzi Okenyo, Debra Oswald, Amy Thunig-McGregor and Jennifer Wong.
Meanwhile, a flurry of events news filled out our calendars this week, with program announcements from the National Young Writers’ Festival and the Canberra Writers Festival, and over in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Queenstown Writers Festival and the national Bookshop Day.
Alongside festival news, two companies also announced event news this week, with Hachette revealing Harry Hartog Carindale as the location for its 2025 Hachette Book Haul and Penguin Random House Australia announcing the return of the Personal Penguin figurine for this year’s Love Your Bookshop Day.
Helen Garner has been longlisted for the UK’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction for How to End a Story (Text). In other awards news this week, the Queensland Literary Award shortlists have been announced; winners were announced for the NSW History Awards and the Davitt Awards; while the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival presented awards to the owners of local bookstore Books for Cooks (Tim White and Amanda Schulze) and food writer Alice Zaslavsky; the Australian Political Book of the Year Award announced a shortlist of four; the ASA announced the 2025 recipients of its Tasmanian Writers and Illustrators Mentorship Program; and Overland shared the shortlist for the 2025 Nakata Brophy Prize for the best short story by a young Indigenous writer. Meanwhile, in the UK, the inaugural winners of the PEN Presents x International Booker Prize were revealed.
Finally, in a short update in local rights and acquisitions, Allen & Unwin acquired world rights to The Desert Swimmer, a memoir by Brendan Cullen; and HarperCollins Publishers Australia has acquired ANZ rights to Teeth Kicker, the debut crime novel by Glenn Orgias.
Overseas, the Guardian reported that, in the US, AI company Anthropic has agreed to pay US$1.5 billion (A$2.28b) to settle a class-action lawsuit by book authors who say the company took pirated copies of their works to train its chatbot; and in the UK, the Bookseller shared the news that children’s author Julia Donaldson has become the first author in recorded history to sell more than 50 million units through British bookshops.
In the US, Publishers Weekly reported Roxane Gay (Bad Feminist, Not that Bad) will receive the National Book Foundation’s 2025 Literarian Award; and Barack Obama’s favourite books of the summer; Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale) has published a satirical short story responding to book bans in Canada, reported the Guardian; and, in the lead up to Jane Austen’s 250th birthday this December, Carolyn Dever interviewed Devoney Looser whose book Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane was released earlier this month.
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Category: This week’s news
