Tuesday, 22 August 2006
Jim Hall, former editor and literary editor of the Australian newspaper and editor of the Bulletin magazine, died last week, aged 71. Although he spent most of his career working...

Tuesday, 22 August 2006
Popular and prolific Australian playwright and author Alex Buzo has died at the age of 62, after a long battle with cancer. Buzo was best known for his 1968 play...

Tuesday, 22 August 2006
The importance of Australia as a rights market will be discussed at the 20th International Rights Directors Meeting, to be held the day before this year's Frankfurt Book Fair.The topic of this...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
Michael Sellers, the son of comedian Peter Sellers, has died.Sellers wrote two memoirs about the difficult relationship he had with his father: PS I Love You (Sutton Publishing) and Sellers...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
American author, environmentalist and anarchist Murray Bookchin has died, aged 85.Bookchin was the author of over 20 books on environmental and political topics, and his writings in the 1960s anticipated...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
Australian theologian and biblical scholar Leon Morris has died, aged 92.Morris wrote more than 50 books that have sold nearly two million copies worldwide and have been translated into many...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
Nobel Prize-winning German author Günter Grass is weathering a storm of controversy over revelations that he served in the infamous Nazi SS during WWII.Grass, who became famous for novels examining...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
The NSW Council of Civil Liberties has launched a legal challenge to the recent banning of two books by the Classification Review Board.The Council will shortly begin proceedings in the Federal...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
The Overstocks and Remainders Fair (OARF) has announced the dates and venue for its 2007 event.OARF will be held at Melbourne's Rydges Carlton Hotel on 11 and 12 February 2007.For...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
HarperCollins has again reported a record annual result, its ninth consecutive year of growth, with worldwide sales of US$1.3 billion (A$1.65 billion) for 2005-06 and operating profit rising to US$167...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
The Brisbane Writers' Festival (BWF) has released the full program and guest-list for this year's Festival, to be held from 13-17 September.With more than 20 international and 200 local guests,...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
Sisters in Crime has announced the shortlist for this year's Davitt Awards for the best crime books by Australian women published during 2005.Sisters in Crime members will now vote on...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
The shortlists for the NSW Kids Own Literature Awards (the KOALA awards) and Queensland's Books I Love Best Yearly (BILBY awards) have been announced.The BILBYs and KOALAs are children's choice...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
The shortlist for this year's Victorian Premier's Literary Awards was announced at the state Library of Victoria last week by Victorian Minister of Arts Mary Delahunty.There are 41 books in...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
Three of the nineteen novels on the longlist for this year's Man Booker Prize are by Australian authors.Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey (Knopf), The Secret River by Kate...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
In news from our ‘Around the World' blog this week, one of the world's largest libraries--the library of the University of California--joins Google's library project, London's Evening Standard speculates that...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
The first Tasmanian Book Fair was held in Hobart on Sunday, as part of Tasmanian Living Writers' Week. The fair, which included a meet-an-author program, readings, launches, giveaways and music...

Tuesday, 15 August 2006
The winners of this year's Romance Writers of Australia Romantic Book of the Year awards have been announced. The winner of the long romance section was Pride of Lancashire (Anna...

Monday, 14 August 2006
A letter to WBN subscribers The new online WBN service has now been in operation for about two months and we would like to share with the trade some of things...

Tuesday, 8 August 2006
It's not often that a story on poetry makes the news section of the Sydney Morning Herald, but a war of words between poets John Kinsella, Anthony Lawrence and Robert...

Tuesday, 8 August 2006
Books Alive may have just started, but it seems to have made an impact on our reading habits already. The proof of the pudding is in the charts. Four of...

Tuesday, 8 August 2006
The shortlist of books nominated for this year's Age Book of the Year prize has been released. The shortlisted titles are: Nonfiction: A Trial Separation: Australia and the Decolonisation of...

Tuesday, 8 August 2006
The winners of this year's Speech Pathology Australia's Book of the Year 2006 are:Language development, young children--Annie's Chair (Deborah Niland, Viking)Language development, lower primary children--The Postman's Dog (Lisa Shanahan, illus...

Tuesday, 8 August 2006
Indian novelist Raja Rao has died in Austin, Texas, aged 97. His book Kanthapura (Oxford University Press India), published in 1938, was the first major Indian novel to be written...

Tuesday, 8 August 2006
The future of Campus Bookseller+Publisher--the only magazine to focus exclusively on Australian tertiary publishing and campus bookselling--is in the balance following confirmation that the forthcoming October issue may be its last.The magazine,...

Tuesday, 8 August 2006
Several authors including Christopher Cheng, Matthew Reilly, Hazel Edwards and Jen McVeity, have been named as literacy ‘champions' as part of this year's National Literacy and Numeracy Week (NLNW) which...