ABA 2026 conference program announced
Thursday, 26 March 2026
The Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) has released the program for its 2026 conference, to run from 13 to 15 June at in Canberra at the QT hotel (pictured). Sessions at...
Bakers Lane acquires Jones’s “Swimming Backwards”
Thursday, 26 March 2026
Bakers Lane Books has acquired world rights to the novel Swimming Backwards by Helen Jones. Swimming Backwards, which was shortlisted for the publisher’s inaugural Fearless Prize, tells the story of grieving...
Women’s Prize for Nonfiction 2026 shortlist announced
Thursday, 26 March 2026
In the UK, the shortlist for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Nonfiction, worth £30,000 (A$57,702) has been announced. The six shortlisted titles are: The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History...
APA, ASA warn against copyright exceptions; Hachette, Sweatshop launch First Nations, CALD scholarship; Writers Victoria petition hits 10K signatures
Wednesday, 25 March 2026
In news this week, industry bodies including the Australian Publishers Association, Australian Society of Authors, and Copyright Agency have released a joint statement warning against expansions to copyright exceptions it...
Rights round-up
Wednesday, 25 March 2026
Sales Fiction Jane Novak Literary Agency has sold various rights to Prima Facie (Suzie Miller, Picador), with Greek rights to Antipodes, Estonian rights to Hea Lugu and Japanese rights to...
Text acquires Szubanski memoir
Wednesday, 25 March 2026
Text Publishing has announced the acquisition of the memoir I Can’t Tell You But I Will by Magda Szubanski. Szubanski is a comedian, actor and LGBT rights advocate. Her previous memoir,...
Shukman wins 2025 Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award
Wednesday, 25 March 2026
In the UK, debut author Harry Shukman has won the £10,000 (A$19,224) Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award for Year of the Rat (Vintage), a “shocking, eye-opening...
HGCP acquires “The Everywhere Train”
Wednesday, 25 March 2026
Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing (HGCP) has acquired world rights to The Everywhere Train by author Deborah Frenkel and illustrator Danny Snell. From the creators of 2025 National Simultaneous Storytime book The...
BookUp conference and research day dates announced
Wednesday, 25 March 2026
The 2026 BookUp publishing conference will run in Melbourne on 22 July, the Australian Publishers Association (APA) has announced. Now in its sixth year, BookUp in 2026 “will focus on...
Local bookshop numbers double for 2026 “crawl”
Wednesday, 25 March 2026
Following the inaugural Global Book Crawl (GBC) in 2025, 140 Australian bookshops have signed up for this year’s event. In 2026, 12 separate book crawls will take place in Australia,...
Read the latest Publishers Weekly
Wednesday, 25 March 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.
No Hiding from the Woman in the Moon (Bruce Pascoe, Magabala)
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
Bruce Pascoe’s No Hiding from the Woman in the Moon is a quiet, contemplative collection that looks upward to the Moon while remaining firmly grounded in Country. The poems move...
Periodic Bitch (Emma Hardy, A&U)
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
In Periodic Bitch, Emma Hardy delivers a memoir that is both intellectually rigorous and literary in style, interrogating the cultural construction of the “female monster” alongside her lived experience of premenstrual...
The Fast Lane (Pip Harry, illus Katrin Dreiling, Larrikin)
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
The Fast Lane by Pip Harry (August & Jones, Because of You) is a lively and funny story about Daisy, a fast-swimming and competitive pig who struggles to share the...
Tearing Myself Together (Anna Whateley, A&U Children’s)
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
Anna Whateley’s raw, authentic representations of neurodivergent young women in Tearing Myself Together offer the kind of windows and mirrors that are still too rare in Australian young adult fiction....
The Enigmatic Echidna: Secrets of the World’s Most Curious Creature (Danielle Clode, Black Inc.)
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
In The Enigmatic Echidna: Secrets of the World’s Most Curious Creature, biologist and award-winning author Danielle Clode (Koala: A Life in Trees) draws readers into the fascinating world of one...
Capture (Amanda Lohrey, Text)
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
In Amanda Lohrey’s Capture, ageing psychiatrist James Mather is commissioned to research psychological explanations for alien capture experiences. His interviews with “experiencers” – whose stories he quickly finds to be...
The Greatest Goal in the Galaxy (Uranus FC #1) (Mick Elliott, Scholastic)
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
The Greatest Goal in the Galaxy is a fun start to a new series, with author and illustrator Mick Elliott (The Turners, Squidge Dibley) blending football, aliens and ever-popular gross-out...
Silvia (Maya Caruso, Echo)
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
Midlife awakening lies at the heart of Maya Caruso’s impressive debut novel, Silvia. This character-driven novel follows 42-year-old Silvia, a divorced daughter of a widowed Italian matriarch, Silvia Senior, whose...
A Little Unwell (Kerry Jewell, Hachette)
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
Kerry Jewell’s debut novel, A Little Unwell, is a candid medical drama that draws back the privacy curtain on the life of a young resident doctor working rotations at an...
Dylan Thomas Prize 2026 shortlist announced
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
In the UK, the shortlist for Swansea University's Dylan Thomas Prize has been announced. This year, the shortlist is composed of 4 novels and 2 poetry collections. The shortlisted titles...
Thom wins 2025 Judith Wright Poetry Prize
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
Overland has announced Mia Thom as the winner of the 2025 Judith Wright Poetry Prize, worth $6000, for their poem “go raging”. Thom’s poem, chosen from a shortlist of 8, will...
Campos wins inaugural Kat Muscat Award
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
The inaugural winner of the $1000 Kat Muscat Award is Paula Campos for “Palm Trees, Piercings and a More Lowkey, Chill Place to Live”, which appeared in Voiceworks #136 “Quits!”. This year, the...
“Wild Dark Shore” wins Book of the Year at 2026 Indie Book Awards
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
Australian independent booksellers have announced the winners of the 2026 Indie Book Awards, with Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore (Penguin) named Book of the Year. The winners in each category...
A&U acquires Jeff Apter’s “Reckless”
Tuesday, 24 March 2026
Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired world rights to the nonfiction title Reckless by music writer Jeff Apter. Reckless is the inside story of Australian Crawl, the band behind tracks...
Australian Book Design Awards 2026 shortlists announced
Monday, 23 March 2026
The shortlists for the 2026 Australian Book Design Awards, presented by the Australian Book Designers Association (ABDA), have been announced. Shortlisted works in each category are: Best designed general fiction...
Woldeyes awarded new travel fellowship
Monday, 23 March 2026
Poet and storyteller Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes will appear at national and international writers festivals this year as the recipient of a new travel fellowship supported by the Barton Family Foundation. The...
MWF releases 2026 program and ventures into the suburbs
Friday, 20 March 2026
Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) has released its program for 2026, featuring more than 150 artists participating in readings, panels and workshops from 7 to 10 May. This year marks MWF’s...
NZ Booklovers Awards 2026 winners announced
Thursday, 19 March 2026
In Aotearoa New Zealand, the winners of the 2026 NZ Booklovers Awards have been announced. The winning titles in each category are: Best Adult Fiction Book Softly Calls the Devil...
Affirm acquires Williams’s “The German Ward”
Thursday, 19 March 2026
Affirm Press has acquired world rights to The German Ward, a “breathtaking historical love story” by Pip Williams, with US rights sold to Ballantine and UK rights to Chatto &...
