SWF 2024 program released, Needham wins MUD Literary Prize, International Booker Prize longlist announced

Over the past week, the program for the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival was announced, featuring international guests including Bonnie Garmus, Ann Patchett, Michael Connelly and Celeste Ng, and local guests including Shankari Chandran, Melissa Lucashenko and Anna Funder. Meanwhile, in Aotearoa New Zealand, seven successful recipients of the second round of funding in the Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture & Heritage audiobook publishing seed program will receive grants to produce 28 audiobooks in total.

In awards news, the International Booker Prize 2024 longlist has been released. Locally, Kylie Needham has won the 2024 MUD Literary Prize for her novel Girl in a Pink Dress (Hamish Hamilton); Xiaole Zhan is the recipient of the 2024 Kat Muscat Fellowship to work on their essay collection ‘Think an Empty Room, Moonly with Phoneglow’; and Penguin Random House Australia has announced the 2024 shortlist for the Penguin Literary Prize.

In the United States, Publishers Weekly reported that three former high-level staff from Penguin Random House and Macmillan have launched a new publishing company, Authors Equity, which will not pay advances, but will share a higher proportion of book profits with authors.

Elsewhere in literary news, the Guardian reported that the State Library of Victoria cancelled events involving writers Omar Sakr, Jinghua Qian and Alison Evans, who the paper said were ‘left to speculate on whether cancellations relate to their pro-Palestinian stances’.

Category: This week’s news