Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

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Boy Swallows Universe (Trent Dalton, Fourth Estate) 

Boy Swallows Universe cover Friday, 27 April 2018
The debut novel from award-winning journalist Trent Dalton is a harrowing coming-of-age tale set against the street-level drug trade in 1980s Brisbane. Boy Swallows Universe follows Eli Bell from ages...

The Nowhere Child (Christian White, Affirm Press)

Friday, 27 April 2018
Sammy Went was a toddler when she disappeared from her home in Kentucky 28 years ago. Kim Leamy is an Australian photography teacher living a fairly unremarkable life until a...

Introducing Quirky Kid Publishing

Thursday, 19 April 2018
Quirky Kid Publishing—the publishing arm of Sydney- and Wollongong-based child psychology clinic The Quirky Kid Clinic—has won the Educational Initiatives Award at the 2018 London Book Fair (LBF) International Excellence...

Meet new Australian voices at the Intersection

Thursday, 19 April 2018
‘Commentators have been pointing out for decades how the children’s and young adult literary landscape has largely reflected one dominant, homogeneous story of privilege and power that rarely admits “outsider”...

Townsend’s ‘Nevermoor’ wins locally and in the UK

Thursday, 19 April 2018
Jessica Townsend’s Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow (Lothian) has been named Book of the Year at the 2018 Indie Book Awards. Nevermoor, which also took out the children’s category of the awards,...

Whisper (Lynette Noni, Pantera Press)

Friday, 13 April 2018
Subject Six-Eight-Four (aka Jane Doe) has been locked up in an underground facility and experimented on for over two and a half years as part of a mysterious ‘program’. In...

Under My Bed (John Dickson, illus by Guridi, Berbay) 

Friday, 13 April 2018
Most people will remember the spine-tingling feeling of lying in bed at night and imagining there are monsters in their bedroom—and the comfort of realising that they’re safely snuggled up...

Lifel1k3 (Jay Kristoff, A&U)

Friday, 13 April 2018
Set in a savage post-apocalyptic California (or Kalifornya as it’s remembered now), Lifel1k3 (Lifelike) follows 15-year-old Eve, who makes a living building robots out of scraps and using them to...

Bonesland (Brendan Lawley, Text) 

Friday, 13 April 2018
Sixteen-year-old Bones Carter has a lot going on. With his obsessive-compulsive tendencies, anxiety, germ-phobia, separated parents and regular harassment at the hands of his older brother Trav and school bully...

The Peacock Detectives (Carly Nugent, Text) 

Thursday, 12 April 2018
Eleven-year-old Cassie Anderson, Peacock Detective, like all great detectives, is good at noticing things. She notices the scratches in the corner of the cage when the peacocks William Shakespeare and...

Stone Girl (Eleni Hale, Penguin) 

Thursday, 12 April 2018
Sophie grows up saddled with a missing dad and an unreliable alcoholic mother. At the tender age of 12, she finds her mother dead and blames herself. As there is...

Australian delegation to visit the US

Thursday, 12 April 2018
If you’ll be in New York City in early June this year, look out for a group of eight Australian publishers, rights managers and literary agents, who will travel there...

Awards put poetry in the spotlight

Thursday, 12 April 2018
Poetry has been the focus of several Australian awards and shortlists recently, with poet and performer Candy Royalle being chosen from a shortlist of 11 poets to win the 2018...

Neverland (Margot McGovern, Random House) 

Thursday, 12 April 2018
Like Alice through the looking glass, Dorothy in Oz and Wendy in Neverland, Kit Learmonth’s childhood was full of fantastical adventures: pirates, witches, fairies and battles with terrible monsters. But...

Introducing Alex Adsett

Wednesday, 11 April 2018
Alex Adsett is a literary agent representing authors across all ages and most genres, and also a freelance publishing consultant offering commercial contract advice to authors and publishers. She has 20...

Waiting for Elijah (Kate Wild, Scribe) 

Tuesday, 3 April 2018
In Armidale, NSW, in 2009, 24-year-old Elijah Holcombe was shot and killed by a police officer. Elijah was described by all who knew him as a sweet, sensitive and artistic...

Traumata (Meera Atkinson, UQP) 

Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Trauma and the events that provoke it involve a complex web of personal experience, history and society, but most books on the topic seem to sit squarely in either the...

Staying: A Memoir (Jessie Cole, Text) 

Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Jessie Cole’s Staying is a well-written, extremely moving memoir that steers resolutely clear of stereotypes and self-pity. The ‘staying’ of the title refers to how Cole resumes control of her...