Books+Publishing is conducting research on wages and working conditions in the Australian book industry for a series of feature articles. We last conducted this survey... Read more

The Wheeler Centre (TWC) has announced its Next Chapter program will not open for applications in 2022, following the end of the organisation’s partnership with... Read more

Norman Erikson Pasaribu is the winner of the inaugural Patricia Kailis International Writing Fellowship, worth $30,000. Pasaribu, a writer and poet from Indonesia, will undertake... Read more

Allen & Unwin (A&U) has partnered with Voices from the Intersection (Voices) to offer a mentorship opportunity for emerging children’s and YA Own Voices writers... Read more

The shortlist for the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award was announced in the past week, as well as the winners of the 2022 Chief Minister’s NT Book Awards.

Melbourne Writers Festival has revealed the first guests for the 2022 event, taking place in September; Fremantle Press CEO Jane Fraser is to leave the publishing house after 15 years; and Alex Adsett will acquire The Authors’ Agent from Brian Cook.

The Australian Publishers Association will use its Australia Council sector development funding to subsidise a new training and mentoring program for early career rights professionals; Varuna has announced two new fellowships, one for First Nations writers and the other for parents and carers, along with the inaugural recipients of the Queensland Writers Centre Varuna Fellowship; and the Victorian government has announced the recipients of the latest Creative Victoria Creators Fund.

Overseas, Clare Jackson has won the Wolfson History Prize in the UK, while a new report from Austrian publishing consultant Ruediger Wischenbart has shown a rise in digital book sales in several markets.

Books+Publishing rounds up Australian publishers’ top local adult nonfiction titles releasing in time for Christmas 2022. Memoir and biography Themes of joy, love and community run... Read more

Tobias Madden’s Take a Bow, Noah Mitchell (Penguin, September) is a Ballarat-set coming-of-age rom-com that follows teens Eli and Noah as they bond online and... Read more

A book I recently read and adored was Holden Sheppard’s upcoming YA novel The Brink (Text, August). On the surface, it’s a hard-hitting story about... Read more

Sales Fiction HarperCollins Australia has sold Spanish translation rights to The Truth About Her (Jacqueline Maley to HarperCollins Iberica S A, and Turkish translation rights... Read more

Top 10 bestsellers Dirt Town (Hayley Scrivenor, Macmillan) It Ends With Us (Colleen Hoover, S&S) Heartstopper Volume One (Alice Oseman, Hodder Children’s Books) Bluey: Bluey... Read more

Shaun Prescott continues his existential explorations of modern life in his second novel, which follows his 2017 debut The Town. In the opening pages of... Read more

A fascination with birds and wildlife took hold early for Darryl Jones. Now a professor of ecology at Griffith University, he first noticed the creatures... Read more

Paper Cage is a thrilling whodunnit and the winner of the 2021 Michael Gifkins Prize. The story centres on Lorraine, a records clerk at a... Read more

In her return to middle-grade fiction, Kelli Anne Hawkins delivers another madcap caper for 10- to 12-year-olds that has puns aplenty and some genuine chuckles.... Read more

The narrative nonfiction genre of children’s books—particularly those exploring the natural world—seems to be growing, and it can be hard to get right, since the... Read more

Noah and Eli play an online computer game together most nights. They take down swamp goblins and drink virtual flagons of ale for hours at... Read more

Rhiannon Wilde’s second YA novel, Where You Left Us, is as bewitching as her Glendower Award–winning debut Henry Hamlet’s Heart. It follows the two Prince... Read more

Frank Moorhouse, the author of 18 books including the ‘Edith Trilogy’, has died aged 83. Penguin Random House Australia writes: Born in Nowra, Frank Moorhouse... Read more

Books+Publishing is partnering with US trade news magazine Publishers Weekly to provide our subscribers with exclusive access to the weekly digital edition of PW magazine.... Read more

We love wayward children in literature. Not so much in life.

Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing is thrilled to announce the publication of Wild Things: How we learn to read and what can happen if we don’t, a parenting guide and memoir by bestselling children’s author Sally Rippin. Publishing in August 2022, Rippin’s first book for adults is a compelling, surprising and incredibly timely exploration of neurodiversity and how children learn—or fail—to read. Described as ‘essential and extraordinary reading’ for caregivers and educators, Wild Things is vulnerable, honest and meticulously researched, and filled with Rippin’s brilliant and eye-opening insights into how we can help all kids find the joy in reading, and advocate for them within our schooling system.

‘Wild Things is the book I needed when my son first started school,’ said author, Sally Rippin, ‘Writing it was a four-year labour of love, combining research, interviews and lived experience, looking for answers to all the questions I had about neurodivergency, and how it is that so many kids are still struggling to fit into an education system that can’t meet their needs. There are so many things I learned the hard way that I wish I’d known earlier.’

Only three to five percent of the Australian population identifies as dyslexic, yet one in four Australian children are entering high school without an adequate level of reading and writing—and this proportion can go up to 40% of kids in disadvantaged or high-migrant areas. At a time when children should be discovering the joy of reading, our education system is failing them—but Rippin creates a compelling case for change and evolution to adapt ‘school’ for everyone.

‘Sally Rippin’s firecracker first book for adults is a masterpiece and a game changer,’ said publishing director Marisa Pintado. ‘In laying bare her parenting difficulties, Sally makes herself vulnerable so that “wild things” and neurodivergent kids everywhere might have the opportunity to learn how to read: the right kind of support. Her research is comprehensive and illuminating, and despite the urgency of the work ahead for anyone who loves or works with neurodivergent kids, Sally’s book is above all hopeful: reading is the key to the world, and we can help every kid get there no matter how their brain works.’

Wild Things will be published in August 2022.

Scribe has acquired world rights in a new book by author and political commentator Niki Savva. The new book will be the third of Savva’s covering the last three Coalition governments, which started with The Road to Ruin in 2016 and was continued by Plots and Prayers in 2019. In it, she lays out the final unravelling of the Coalition at the hands of a resurgent Labor and the so-called teal independents that culminated in the historic 2022 election.

Savva’s editor and Scribe’s publisher-in-chief, Henry Rosenbloom, says, ‘When we published Niki’s first book, So Greek, in 2010, which was not only a memoir but also revealed the inside story of the rivalry between John Howard and Peter Costello, I had no idea that this was the beginning of a sequence of major books about Australian politics.

’Written by one of Australia’s now most trusted political commentators, Niki’s new book will be the unique final volume of an epic political trilogy.’

‘There are many reasons why Morrison lost,’ Savva says, ‘and why Albanese defied history and the doubters to prevail. I will be exploring all this and more in the book.’

Scribe will publish Savva’s book in Australia and New Zealand in December 2022.