September reviews round-up
4 August 2021
In August, our reviewers enjoyed several forthcoming novels exploring themes of change, identity and relationships from Max Easton, Amal Awad and Jacquie Byron. Easton’s The Magpie Wing paints a ‘moving...
Reps off the road: Mandy Wildsmith on repping during lockdown
4 August 2021
While the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over, some semblance of normality is on the horizon. Here, Mandy Wildsmith from Hardie Grant Books reflects on the past year as life...
Cat Rabbit on ‘How to Make Friends: A Bear’s Guide’
4 August 2021
Cat Rabbit is a textile artist and designer based in Melbourne. In her latest picture book, How to Make Friends: A Bear's Guide (Berbay, October), Rabbit explores the struggles of...
Christmas in July: children’s and YA
28 July 2021
Last week Books+Publishing brought you a round up of Australian publishers' top adult titles releasing time for Christmas 2021. Here are their children's and young adult picks. Picture books Scholastic’s...
Diana Reid on ‘Love & Virtue’
28 July 2021
Diana Reid's debut novel Love & Virtue (Ultimo, October) explores feminism, power and sex through the lives of two young women at an Australian university. Reviewer Georgia Brough calls Love &...
Melbourne City of Lit meets Quebec’s Librairie Hannenorak
28 July 2021
In this series, run in partnership with the Melbourne City of Literature Office, we get to know some of the bookstores in the UNESCO Cities of Literature network. In 2009,...
Christmas in July
21 July 2021
Books+Publishing rounds up Australian publishers' top local adult titles releasing in time for Christmas 2021. Literary highlights Hannah Kent’s hotly anticipated third novel Devotion (Picador, November), set in 19th-century South...
Annie Raser-Rowland on ‘Let’s Eat Weeds!’
20 July 2021
Annie Raser-Rowland is a Melbourne-based horticulturalist and artist. She is the co-author (with Adam Grubb) of Let's Eat Weeds (Scribble, September), a guidebook for young readers on which weeds are...
Max Easton on ‘The Magpie Wing’
14 July 2021
The Magpie Wing (Giramondo, September) is Max Easton's first book of fiction. Set in western Sydney, the novel follows the relationships between three young adults as they explore subcultures and identities. Reviewer...
Melbourne City of Lit meets Edinburgh’s Typewronger Books
14 July 2021
In this series, run in partnership with the Melbourne City of Literature Office, we get to know some of the bookstores in the UNESCO Cities of Literature network. Down a...
Poppy Nwosu on ‘Road Tripping with Pearl Nash’
7 July 2021
Road Tripping with Pearl Nash (Wakefield, September) is Poppy Nwosu's third romantic novel for young adults. It follows protagonist Pearl Nash on a road trip during the summer holidays before...
August reviews round-up
7 July 2021
Several highly regarded debut works of fiction coming in August feature millennial protagonists, including Allee Richards’ VPLA Unpublished Manuscript Prize–shortlisted Small Joys of Real Life, which reviewer Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen...
Samantha Rutter on founding new publisher Storytorch during Covid
7 July 2021
After crowdfunding a successful 2020 children’s book, author Samantha Rutter sought a way to ‘pay it forward’ through a new publishing house focused on celebrating community. She tells Books+Publishing about...
Q&A with Dymocks CEO Mark Newman
30 June 2021
Dymocks CEO Mark Newman joined the bookselling chain just as the pandemic took hold around the globe. Its effects for Dymocks have been mixed. Newman says that while suburban and...
Melbourne City of Lit meets Nottingham’s Five Leaves Bookshop
30 June 2021
In this series, run in partnership with the Melbourne City of Literature Office, we get to know some of the bookshops in the UNESCO Cities of Literature network. ‘The shop opened the...
Meet the ABDA Emerging Designers of the Year: Mika Tabata
23 June 2021
In the lead-up to the 2021 Australian Book Designers Association (ABDA) awards, Books+Publishing spoke to the two shortlisted nominees for Emerging Designer of the Year. In this second instalment we speak to Sydney-based...
Annie Smithers on ‘Recipe for a Kinder Life’
22 June 2021
Chef, cookbook author and writer Annie Smithers's Recipe for a Kinder Life (Thames & Hudson, August) blends memoir, philosophy and practical tips on sustainability based on the author's experience running...
Meet the ABDA Emerging Designers of the Year: George Saad
17 June 2021
In the lead-up to the 2021 Australian Book Designers Association (ABDA) Awards, Books+Publishing spoke to the two shortlisted nominees for Emerging Designer of the Year. In this first instalment we talk to...
Reading across the ditch: Forthcoming highlights from Aotearoa New Zealand
17 June 2021
Sharing a travel bubble and a relatively compatible time zone, could Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand's respective book industries be looking at each other afresh in this new pandemic era?...
Melbourne City of Lit meets Milan’s Libreria dello Spettacolo
17 June 2021
In this series, run in partnership with the Melbourne City of Literature Office, we get to know some of the bookshops in the UNESCO Cities of Literature network. When, in 1979, Maria...
Career path: Andrew Robertson
9 June 2021
Andrew Robertson, who began his career at one of Melbourne's most well-loved bookshops, joined NewSouth Books as the account manager for Victoria and Tasmania in 2019. Here he shares his...
Malla Nunn on ‘Sugar Town Queens’
9 June 2021
Malla Nunn's Sugar Town Queens (A&U, August) is a young adult novel set in Sugar Town, South Africa. This coming-of-age story follows 15-year-old Amandla as she uncovers her family history and...
July reviews round-up
2 June 2021
Releasing in July are two well-reviewed memoirs about family and intergenerational trauma: Dianne O’Brien’s Daughter of the River Country and Amani Haydar’s The Mother Wound. Although both stories are confronting...
Zoe Deleuil on ‘The Night Village’
2 June 2021
In Zoe Deleuil's debut novel The Night Village (Fremantle Press, August), a brief relationship and an unexpected pregnancy see Australian expat Simone suddenly living with a new baby in her...
Melbourne City of Lit meets Heidelberg’s The Travel Bookshop
26 May 2021
In this series, run in partnership with the Melbourne City of Literature Office, we get to know some of the bookshops in the UNESCO Cities of Literature network. 'Heidelberg is most famous...
Amani Haydar on ‘The Mother Wound’
25 May 2021
Artist, writer and lawyer Amani Haydar's father murdered her mother in 2015, while Haydar was pregnant with her first child. The Mother Wound (Macmillan, July), Haydar's debut memoir, is an...
Meet literary agent Natasha Solomun
19 May 2021
As the pandemic keeps rights sellers from meeting face-to-face, Books+Publishing is shining a regular spotlight on the work of Australian rights agents. Today, we hear from Natasha Solomun, who worked as a rights executive...
The rights approach: Australians on rights sales in Italy
12 May 2021
This year the Australian Publishers Association is running a series of rights networking events to help Australian publishers connect with overseas markets. In the lead-up to its event with Italy,...
50 years of publishing in Australia: Hachette looks back
5 May 2021
Hodder & Stoughton was incorporated in Australia on 2 April 1971. On this, the 50th anniversary of the company’s permanent roots in Australia, Hachette Australia & New Zealand CEO Louise...
June reviews round-up
5 May 2021
Winter 2021 yields new fiction from seasoned authors, including Briohny Doyle’s third book Echolalia, Kate Liston-Mills’s Dear Ibis, the follow-up to her 2017 collection The Waterfowl are Drunk! and Michael...
