Prime Minister’s Literary Awards; Sovereign Texts journal; Magabala publisher Rachel Bin Salleh on Charmaine Papertalk Green
This week, Writing Australia announced the winners of the 2025 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, which included Theory & Practice (Michelle de Kretser, Text); Mean Streak (Rick Morton, Fourth Estate); Critical Care: Nurses on the Frontline of Australia’s AIDS Crisis (Geraldine Fela, UNSW Press); The Other Side of Daylight: New and Selected Poems (David Brooks, UQP); Leo and Ralph (Peter Carnavas, UQP); and The Invocations (Krystal Sutherland, Penguin).
Poet, writer, artist and researcher Charmaine Papertalk Green has died; Magabala publisher Rachel Bin Salleh shares her words on Papertalk Green’s life.
In local news, Scribe Publications launched new branding and a new website; Sovereign Texts: Journal of First Peoples Literature launched as a print and online journal for works written by Australian First Peoples; and Simon & Schuster Australia appointed Kristy-Lee Lorraway to the role of publisher, nonfiction.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, six publishers were announced as the representatives attending the Frankfurt Book Fair as part of the Aotearoa New Zealand collective stand, which will be managed by Publishers Association of New Zealand Te Rau o Tākupu (PANZ) president Eboni Waitere.
And B+P and the Melbourne UNESCO City of Literature Office spoke with the Kuhmo City Library in Finland in this week’s feature.
In further award news, The Australian War Memorial has deferred awarding the Les Carlyon Literary Prize in a move that ‘effectively overruled a decision by its appointed judges to award a military history literary prize to a book about the alleged war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith’, reported the Guardian last Friday.
The Queensland Literary Award winners were also announced this week, with Amy McQuire winning the $30,000 Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance for Black Witness (UQP), which judges celebrated for its ‘outstanding scholarly rigour and moral clarity’.
The Australian Crime Writers Association announced the Ned Kelly Award winners; Overland announced Susie Anderson as the winner of the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers for her short story ‘The Claimant’; the Shalom Collective announced the Australian Jewish Writer Awards winners; Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing announced Wenwen Chen as the winner of the biennial Little Hare Illustration Prize; and, in Canada, Australian historian and author Lyndal Roper has been named a finalist for the 2025 Cundill History Prize.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, The Māori Literature Trust Te Waka Taki Kōrero announced the finalists for the Keri Hulme Award.
Events news this week included Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival releasing its 2025 program, which runs 17–19 October; the Sydney Jewish Writers Festival announcing The Jewish Poetry Project, a month-long outdoor exhibition of Jewish poetry; and literary organisation Stella announcing new Day Out events in Ballarat, Aireys Inlet and Melbourne.
Industry professionals this week have been circulating Tajja Isen’s ‘The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem’, published on the Walrus. In the article, Isen delves into the publication of a book and the ‘understanding that, in order for a writer to truly break out, time is a meaningful factor’.
In acquisitions news, Penguin Random House Australia acquired I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World by Sarah Wilson; Ventura Press acquired world rights to Brigid Carrick’s debut commercial fiction, The Belfast Express; and Allen & Unwin (A&U) acquired ANZ rights to The Mother of All Calamities by Lisa Moule and world English rights to Letter from Provence by Sheryle Bagwell, via Margaret Connolly and Associates.
Hachette Australia acquired two novels by Michael Robotham, via Mark Lucas at the Soho Agency, in a multi-territory partnership with Little, Brown Book Group in the UK. The first novel, Tell Me Something True, is inspired by Robotham’s first manuscript.
For younger readers, Bakers Lane Books acquired world rights to Don’t Forget to Remember Me, a YA debut by Annie Drum, via Sally Bird of Calidris Literary Agency; MidnightSun has acquired world rights to Animal Force, a junior fiction novel written by Cerise Madsen and illustrated by Sally Heinrich; and Little Big Sky has acquired world rights to Calm Your Farm and I Love to Draw by Dale Baker in a four-book deal, marking the imprint’s first acquisition since launching this year.
In international updates, Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo won the 2025 Best of Caine Award for her short story ‘Hitting Budapest’, which originally won the Caine Prize in 2011, reported BookBrunch; and Craft magazine and Chytomo have announced the launch of Chapter Ukraine, an interactive digital platform that ‘offers comprehensive information about Ukrainian books available in translation’.
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Category: This week’s news
