Miles Franklin longlist, NSW Premier’s Literary Award winners, Levens resigns as Booktopia CFO

The 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award longlist and the NSW Premier’s Literary Award winners were both announced this week, with Ali Cobby Eckermann’s verse novel She Is the Earth (Magabala) winning the overall $10,000 book of the year award, as well as the $30,000 Indigenous Writers’ Prize, at the latter event.

In other local news this week, Booktopia CFO Fiona Levens has resigned; Cumberland City Council has voted to overturn its recent motion to ban same-sex parenting books from its libraries; ABC News reported that Sydney children’s author Oliver Phommavanh has been charged for allegedly grooming a minor online; and Big W has opened a new store at Stanhope Gardens in north-western Sydney, which it says will have ‘an extensive books and technology department’.

Elsewhere in awards news, Alexis Wright has won the fiction award in the 2024 James Tait Black Prizes for Praiseworthy (Giramondo); the winners of the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and the 2023 Aurealis Awards have been announced; Coco X Huang has won the 68th Blake Poetry Prize; Kathleen Hastings has won the 2024 ASA/HQ Fiction Prize; shortlists have been announced for the BookPeople 2024 Bookseller of the Year awards, the Michael Gifkins Prize and the Dorothy Hewett Award; and the New Zealand Society of Authors Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa (PEN NZ Inc) has announced a new NZ$5000 award for Aotearoa New Zealand writers.

Meanwhile, in the UK, Penguin Random House announced it is merging its Penguin Business and Penguin Life imprints with immediate effect; British-Ghanaian author Caleb Azumah Nelson has won this year’s Dylan Thomas Prize for his second novel, Small Worlds (Viking); and Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman (Fitzcarraldo Editions) has won the 2024 Ondaatje Prize.

Category: This week’s news