Miles Franklin longlist; ABIA winners; record-breaking SWF
Sydney Writers’ Festival and Auckland Writers Festival Waituhi o Tāmaki each reported box office record-breaking years for the 2026 festival (and shared their bestsellers); while Melbourne Writers Festival reported attendance at its 2026 festival was up 16% on the previous year.
In non-festival news, Collins Booksellers in Sale, Victoria, is changing hands; industry bodies have made their submissions to guide the next National Cultural Policy; Āporo Press has announced the sale of world all language rights (ex Aotearoa NZ in English and te reo Māori) to Hoods Landing; HarperCollins Aotearoa has announced two new appointments; and creative writing not-for-profit Story Factory has opened a new centre in the western Sydney suburb of Bidwill.
Awards
The winners of the 2026 Australian Book Industry Awards were announced in Sydney, with Paul Macdonald winning the 2026 Pixie O’Harris Award and Mem Fox winning the Lloyd O’Neil Award; and the longlist for the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award has been announced.
International news
In the UK, Bloomsbury profits rose as an AI licensing agreement boosted its academic division; regional winning stories in the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize have been accused of being AI-generated; Taiwan Travelogue (Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King, Scribe) has won the 2026 International Booker Prize; and in the US, a federal court has ordered the pirate site Anna’s Archive to pay 13 publishers a total of US$19.5 million in damages.
Acquisitions
Allen & Unwin has acquired ANZ rights to crime novel The Wreck by Riley James; RWAG has acquired the anthology The Weight of Witness: The experiences of Australian and New Zealand medics in Gaza; and Christmas Press has acquired world rights to The Medusa Problem by Doris Brett.
Features
Books+Publishing intern Nonie Trainor reports on the Melbourne Writers Festival opening night; and reviewer Sonia Nair spoke with Chris Ames about I Made This Just for You (Ultimo).
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Category: The week that was
