Leading Edge Group enters administration; Alisa Ahmed named Rising Star; DANZ winners
Leading Edge Group, which operates the Leading Edge Books buying group, has entered administration and administrators have scheduled the first creditors meeting; Simon & Schuster has announced further details of its new global imprint Simon Stream; Varuna is launching a new public program and new workshop and event space; the free What Are You Reading? app has gained more than 3,000 users since launch; Amazon Kindle has released Australian research finding half of Australian gen Z readers feel reading is “harder to sustain amid constant distractions”; and the Australian Publishers Association has announced a Graphic Novel Editing Intensive, as part of its Children’s Editorial Program.
Awards
Alisa Ahmed has been named the Australian publishing industry’s 2026 Rising Star; the winners of the 2026 Aotearoa New Zealand Book Industry Awards have been announced; the Copyright Agency has announced the recipients of its latest Publishing Fellowships; the 2026 winners of the DANZ (Diversity in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand) Children’s Book Awards have been announced; the shortlist for the 2026 National Biography Award has been announced; Sisters in Crime has announced the shortlists for the 2026 Davitt Awards; Griffith Review has announced the winners of its 2026 Emerging Voices competition; The Nile has won an Online Retailer Industry Award for its international expansion; Kailum Graves has won the 2026 Furphy Literary Award; and the Faber Writing Academy (FWA) has announced the winners of the 2026 FWA Alumni Award.
Events
The program for the 2026 Blak & Bright Writers Festival, set to run from 3 to 6 September in Naarm/Melbourne, has been announced; and the Festival of Fiction has announced this year’s program, running 21 to 22 November 2026 at Edith Cowan University Joondalup in Western Australia.
Rights
Allen & Unwin has acquired world rights to Bullyproof by Matt Purcell and ANZ rights to Joan Fleming’s debut novel The Fig Book; Bakers Lane Books has acquired world rights to the novel Alice Comes Home by Helen M Jones; and Wombat Books has acquired world rights to junior fiction novel The Dandelion Wish Factory by Jess Horn, to be illustrated by Lara Porter.
Features
Jasmin McGaughey explains the First Nations metadata standards; AI dominates the discussion at the International Publishers Association congress in Malaysia; and reviewer Hannah Cartmel talks with Nadine Browne about her debut novel, Gone Guru (Fremantle Press, September).
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Category: The week that was
