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Rabah wins 2026 Calibre Essay Prize

Photograph of Sahar Rabah Wednesday, 29 April 2026
The Australian Book Review (ABR) has announced Sahar Rabah as the 2026 winner of the $10,000 Calibre Essay Prize for her essay “Between Reality and Dreams”. “Between Reality and Dreams”...

Read the latest Publishers Weekly 

Wednesday, 29 April 2026
Books+Publishing partners with US trade news magazine Publishers Weekly to provide our subscribers with exclusive access to the weekly digital edition of PW magazine. View the current edition.

LIT (Anna Woods, Echo) 

Tuesday, 28 April 2026
Auckland-based writer Anna Woods’ debut novel, LIT, is a psychological thriller set in the same city, centring on 3 emotionally and professionally entangled architects: Virginia Ishak (Gin), Clarissa Taylor (Clary)...

The Secret Garden Club (Wendy Lynn Newton, Macmillan) 

Tuesday, 28 April 2026
Whimsical, witty and genuinely heartwarming, Wendy Lynn Newton’s The Secret Garden Club is a striking debut. When 52-year-old lapsed artist Hilary finds her husband of 30 years, newly retired engineer...

Whitsundays Writers Festival announces 2026 program

Tuesday, 28 April 2026
Whitsundays Writers Festival has announced the program for its one-day event, to be held on 13 September 2026. Festival director Richard Evans said the 2026 program elevates local storytelling. “This...

Vale David Malouf

David Malouf Friday, 24 April 2026
Author and poet David Malouf has died, aged 92. Penguin Random House Australia (PRH) writes: David Malouf wrote across fiction, nonfiction, poetry, libretti and plays and made a significant and...

Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026 shortlist announced

The 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction Judging Panel Thursday, 23 April 2026
The Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist has been announced, which includes “6 powerful stories by new voices and established authors, interrogating women’s roles in society, showcasing women’s agency, and the...

“Pissants” to be adapted for television

Thursday, 23 April 2026
Filmmakers Jesse Laurie and Lewis Mulholland have optioned television rights to Pissants by Brandon Jack (Summit Books), via Alice Cottrell on behalf of the Jane Novak Literary Agency. Laurie, a...

Publishing Triangle Awards winners announced

Cover of Drought Wednesday, 22 April 2026
In the US, the Publishing Triangle, an association of LGBTQ+ people in publishing, has announced winners for the 2026 Publishing Triangle Awards. Winners were announced for 10 categories, including: The...

Bakers Lane acquires Strauss’s “Holding Space”

Picture of Gina Strauss Wednesday, 22 April 2026
Bakers Lane Books has acquired world rights to the nonfiction title Holding Space by Gina Strauss. The publisher described Holding Space as a “hybrid memoir and professional guide offering reflections...

Read the latest Publishers Weekly 

Wednesday, 22 April 2026
Books+Publishing partners with US trade news magazine Publishers Weekly to provide our subscribers with exclusive access to the weekly digital edition of PW magazine. View the current edition.

Night Swimming (Sharon Kernot, Text) 

Night Swimming book cover Tuesday, 21 April 2026
Sharon Kernot’s first foray into adult fiction, Night Swimming, is both a suspenseful verse novel and a ghost story in which the narrator of the book haunts herself. Night Swimming...

A Flash in the Dust (Meg Caddy, UQP) 

A Flash in the Dust cover Tuesday, 21 April 2026
Set in Western Australia in 1899, Meg Caddy’s queer YA historical novel A Flash in the Dust follows Gilberta and Norah, who are imprisoned in Fremantle Asylum and escape into...

I Remember Everything (Fiona Wilkes, Fremantle) 

The cover of "I Remember Everything" by Fiona Wilkes. Tuesday, 21 April 2026
Fiona Wilkes’s debut novel, I Remember Everything, memorialises the LGBTQIA+ communities lost to the AIDS crisis. In this fictionalised memoir, Billie recounts her formative years from 1979 to 1990, moving...

The Sisters of Serendib (Ayesha Inoon, HQ Fiction) 

Tuesday, 21 April 2026
The Sisters of Serendib, the sophomore novel from Ayesha Inoon (Untethered), opens in 1990 with a flurry of events as Tamil Muslims board boats to escape the escalating violence of...

Wormhole (Hannah McElhinney, Affirm) 

Tuesday, 21 April 2026
How far should you go in search of answers when mainstream medicine can’t help? Wormhole is author Hannah McElhinney’s attempt to answer that question through a blend of memoir, cultural...