Thirty-seven writers, publishers and other literary organisations have been awarded a total of $938,117 in the Australia Council’s first grants round for 2017. Nineteen writers... Read more |
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Fiona McFarlane has won the £30,000 (A$52,772) International Dylan Thomas Prize for her short-story collection The High Places (Hamish Hamilton), reports the Guardian. McFarlane was... Read more |
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Penguin Random House (PRH) Australia will establish a Penguin Random House Literary division in June. The division, led by Ben Ball in the newly created... Read more |
Author Mireille Juchau and playwright Alana Valentine have been awarded Writer in Residence fellowships at the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre. Both writers will... Read more |
The shortlist for this year’s Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) Nielsen BookData Booksellers Choice Award has been announced. The shortlisted titles are: The Birdman’s Wife (Melissa... Read more |
The winners of the 2017 New Zealand Book Awards were announced at a ceremony at the Auckland Writers Festival on 16 May. Catherine Chidgey won... Read more |
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Around 18,000 visitors attended this year’s Clunes Booktown Festival in Victoria, which ran from 6-7 May. The number of visitors is about the same as... Read more |
Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) artistic director and CEO Lisa Dempster will step down following this year’s festival, which runs from 25 August to 3 September.... Read more |
Books in Print in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern will close at the end of June. The store has been run by Chris Harrington and... Read more |
The finalists for the Romance Writers of Australia (RWA) Romantic Book of the Year award, known as ‘the Ruby’, have been announced. The finalists in... Read more |
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The Romance Writers of Australia (RWA) has released the program for its 2017 conference, to be held in Brisbane from 11-13 August under the theme... Read more |
Several Australian authors and illustrators have been named as finalists for the Locus Awards for science-fiction and fantasy writing. Garth Nix is a finalist in... Read more |
The winners of the 2017 George Robertson Award, which recognises long and distinguished service to the publishing industry, were announced by the Australian Publishers Association... Read more |
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Echo Publishing has acquired world rights to Meg Keneally’s historical novel Fled in a two-book deal. The novel, which is based on the life of... Read more |
Book recommendation website Better Reading has launched a new podcast featuring interviews with authors. Participating authors so far have included Nikki Gemmell, Candice Fox, Rebecca... Read more |
The shortlist has been announced for the inaugural Red Room Poetry fellowship, launched to recognise the achievements and artistic goals of contemporary Australian poets. The... Read more |
A new global ebook report by industry consultant Rüdiger Wischenbart has argued there is ‘no cohesive single interpretation’ of the world ebook market given the... Read more |
Cengage Learning has reported a 10% decline in adjusted revenues to US$1.5bn (A$2.0bn) in the fiscal year 2017 (ending 31 March), reports the Bookseller. The... Read more |
In the UK, the shortlist for the Orwell Prize for Books 2017 has been announced. The titles shortlisted for the £3000 (A$5547) prize for political... Read more |
In the UK, a survey of 278 acquisition deals in March and April reveals Curtis Brown and Hachette as the biggest agent and publisher respectively, reports... Read more |
The European Commission is considering legislation to address ‘unfair contractual clauses and trading practices identified in platform-to-business relationships’, reports the Bookseller. The initiative, which was... Read more |
Argentina’s book market declined 40% in 2016, from US$905.5m (A$1,228m) in revenue in 2015 to US$540m (A$732m) last year, reports Publishers Weekly. The figures were... Read more |
Sales Fiction—HarperCollins has sold Spanish rights in Latin America to Silver Wattle (Belinda Alexandra) to Ediciones B Mexico SA de CV. Nonfiction—Black Inc. has sold... Read more |
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Two major new releases have topped this week’s overall bestsellers chart, with Into the Water (Paula Hawkins, Doubleday) edging out A Court of Wings and... Read more |
‘Both the original novella and its sequel are powerful, gripping and fresh. Ward effortlessly plays around with language. Her dialogue feels authentically young and edgy,... Read more |
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Journalist and broadcaster Mark Colvin has died, aged 65. Colvin was the author of Light and Shadow: Memoirs of a Spy’s Son (MUP), the story... Read more |
TAFE NSW has announced the level two library at Ultimo TAFE will remain open following resistance to its plans to replace one floor of the... Read more |
In the UK, the Hay Literary Festival has agreed to fund part of the Hay-on-Wye library’s operating costs as a short-term solution to the library’s... Read more |
The second half of 2017 promises a wide selection of book-to-film adaptations, with remakes of popular classics, adaptions of new sci-fi novels and much in... Read more |
Chiara Sullivan blogs about YA books, with a particular focus on diversity and LGBTQIA+ representation, in her blog Books for a Delicate Eternity. ‘Books need... Read more |
The Melbourne City of Literature Office is seeking writers to help create a new ‘Walking the City of Literature’ app, which will feature three self-guided walks highlighting... Read more |
Black Inc. congratulates Peter Wohlleben on winning the American Booksellers Association Adult Non-fiction Book of the Year for his international bestseller The Hidden Life of Trees. Locally, The Hidden Life of Trees has also been shortlisted for the ABIA International Book of the Year and has sold over 21,000 copies. Pulitzer Prize-winning author David George Haskell hails The Hidden Life of Trees as ‘charming, provocative and fascinating’. To order The Hidden Life of Trees, please contact your Penguin Random House sales rep or United Book Distributors on 1800 338 836 or orders@unitedbookdistributors.com.au.
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Nero is pleased to announce the acquisition of a new true crime book by journalist and broadcaster Helen Thomas, to be released in mid-2018. In Murder on Easey Street, Thomas examines a notorious cold case: the killing in 1977 of two young Melbourne women, Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett, who were brutally stabbed to death in their home on Easey Street, Collingwood. In a heart-breaking detail, Armstrong’s infant son was alone in the house for several days before the crime was discovered. Inquiries into the murder are ongoing: in January this year police offered a $1-million reward for information. The book will include interviews with key figures in the investigation of the case, which shook Melbourne to its core. Nero associate publisher Julian Welch says: “In this exciting new book Helen Thomas brings her considerable journalistic talents to one of Australia’s most tragic murders. The result will be a compelling study of a horrific crime that has, to date, escaped discovery and punishment, and a sensitive portrayal of the many people it has affected.” For more information about Murder on Easey Street, please email enquiries@blackincbooks.com.
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