Creative Australia has launched the Creative Workplaces website, a ‘free online hub of resources about pay, safety and respect, to help everyone working in the... Read more

The program for the Byron Writers Festival, running 8–10 August on Bundjalung Country, has been announced. With the theme Passion and Purpose, the 2025 program... Read more

Creative Australia has announced the recipients of the Marten Bequest Scholarships and the Dal Stivens and Kathleen Mitchell awards. The Marten Bequest Scholarships enable artists... Read more

Writers Victoria has announced the recipients of the 13th round of the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund. The eight recipients – who will share the... Read more

Atria Books Australia has acquired world rights to Hate You to Love You by bookseller Joshua Hortinela in a two-book deal through Daniel Pilkington at... Read more

Sarai Kirshner has won the 2025 Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler & LeWitt Studios Essay Prize with her proposal for On Refusal. ‘Taking its roots in the space between two walls... Read more

The Publishers Association of New Zealand/Te Rau o Tākupu (PANZ) has withdrawn its commitment to be the Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2027 Country Guest of Honour, ‘due to lack of committed support from government agencies and other potential funders’, said the organisation this week.

In other local news, Ali Green was appointed chair of the Story Factory board, replacing Gemma Salteri; Fremantle Press launched its 2025 Books for Little Bookaburras program; Q-Lit Festival released its 2025 program; Byron Writers Festival also announced their 2025 program; and Creative Australia launched the Creative Workplaces website.

Among recipients of this year’s King’s Birthday Honours in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand are several authors and industry figures including Julia Marshall, David Paul Burton, Morrin Jackson Rout, JM Coetzee, Ambrose Mungala Chalarimeri, Kirstie Clements, Jim Connelly, Jane Frances Crawley, Gary Crew, Roz Greenwood, Ivor Indyk, Garth Nix and Bernard James Whimpress.

The 2025 Diversity in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (DANZ) Children’s Book Award winners include works by Remy Lai, Victor Steffensen and Sandra Steffensen, Eileen Merriman, and 52 Pasifika student authors; and shortlists for the 2025 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults have been announced.

Also in awards news, Creative Australia this week announced recipients of the Marten Bequest Scholarships, Dal Stivens Award and Kathleen Mitchell Award; Writers Victoria announced the recipients of the 13th round of the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund; while Varuna announced 12 recipients of its 2025 First Nations Fellowships; Angela Slatter is the 2025 Hedberg Writer-in-Residence; the First Nations Writers Festival announced its book and short story award winners; Ava Reid won the 2025 Landfall Tauraka Young Writers’ Essay Prize; and the shortlist for the 2025 Deep Creek Residency Fellowship was also released.

Further afield, the 2025 Jhalak Prize winners have been announced; and Bernadine Evaristo won a one-off Outstanding Contribution Award, presented by the UK Women’s Prize.

In local acquisitions news this week, Allen & Unwin Aotearoa New Zealand acquired world rights to Good Things Come and Go by Josie Shapiro; Summit Books acquired ANZ rights to Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray, via Grace Heifetz at a4 Literary; Atria Books Australia acquired world rights to Hate You to Love You by Joshua Hortinela in a two-book deal, via Daniel Pilkington at The Pilkington Agency; and Transit Lounge acquired world rights to The Phantom Surrealist by Geoffrey Gates.

Elsewhere on the literary internet, Terri-ann White wrote for Griffith Review on the state of Australian publishing: ‘We need new methods to get books of substance into the hands of readers.’ And English thriller writer and journalist Frederick Forsyth has died at 86.

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In partnership with the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, the Sydney Review of Books invites applications for the 2025 Emerging Critics Fellowship program.

Since 2016, the program has fostered diverse, provocative, and original critical voices, and set pathways for emerging critics to develop their practice. In this year’s program, SRB will offer five fellowships to the brightest emerging Australian literary critics. Each fellow will receive a stipend of $4,500 and editorial mentorship to support the publication of three essays on Australian literature in the SRB.

Applications are open to Australian residents and Australian nationals abroad. First Nations critics and culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) critics are strongly encouraged to apply. At least one fellowship will be awarded to a First Nations writer, and another to a CaLD writer. Fellowships will also reflect regional diversity and be allocated to critics from at least three different states and territories.

Applications are now open, and close at 11:59pm on Monday, 30 June 2025. For further details please visit the SRB website.

2025 Roly Sussex Short Story Competition

16 May – 1 September 2025

Open Division: 1st Prize $7500 / 2nd Prize $1500

Secondary School: 1st Prize $1000 / 2nd Prize $500

For entry and submission guidelines: www.esu.org.au/roly-sussex-short-story-competition/

 

Applications for the Peter Blazey Fellowship are now open!

This award is for a work-in-progress by writers with a publishing record. Worth $20,000 this year, the Fellowship honours the larger-than-life figure of Peter Blazey – journalist, author and gay activist.

We’re calling for entries in the non-fiction fields of biography, autobiography, memoir and life writing. Past winners include Ellen van Neerven, who was supported through the Fellowship to complete their acclaimed work, Personal Score, and Mark Mordue with his highly successful biography of Nick Cave, Boy on Fire.

Applications close 11 August 2025.

Click here for information about how to apply.