APA announces Rising Stars shortlist, Gordon-Smith to step down; Booktopia requests extension to voluntary trading suspension; attendance up at MWF, SWF
The Australian Publishers Association (APA) has announced CEO Michael Gordon-Smith will retire from the position, with current APA chief of staff Patrizia Di Biase-Dyson to be the new CEO. The APA has also announced the shortlist for the 2024 Rising Star award, and has called for applications for its new Children’s Editorial Program.
In other news, Booktopia requested last Friday that the voluntary suspension placed on its securities be extended, as it continues to seek funding to meet its redundancy costs and provide working capital; BookPeople, celebrating its centenary in 2024, has held its ‘biggest conference for many years’; Allen & Unwin New Zealand has announced Jenny Hellen has been appointed publisher at large, with Michelle Hurley replacing her as publishing director; in Perth, the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre has been awarded approximately $100,000 from Creative Australia to run its Inclusive Residency Pilot Program; and The Marrow, a new online poetry journal, will launch this month.
Attendance at two major festivals was up in 2024: more than 90,000 people attended the Sydney Writers’ Festival, while the Melbourne Writers Festival reported attendance was up 12%. Also in festival news, the Emerging Writers’ Festival has moved its dates from winter to spring; Mildura Writers Festival announced its 2024 program; Words on the Waves revealed its bestsellers; and two new festivals—Liminal Festival in Melbourne and QPoetry in Brisbane—were also announced.
In awards news, books by Josh Niland and Hetty Lui McKinnon are among the winners of the 2024 James Beard Awards in the US; the New Zealand Society of Authors Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa Te Kaituhi Māori (NZSA) announced the inaugural recipients of its Kaituhi Māori Mentorship and Kupu Kaitiaki programs; and Tracy Farr won the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize for Wonderland.
In the UK, Joseph Coelho won the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing for The Boy Lost in the Maze (illus by Kate Milner, Otter-Barry Books) and Aaron Becker won the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Illustration for The Tree and the River (Walker Books); and Isabella Hammad won the 2024 RSL Encore Award for Enter Ghost (Vintage). And, in the US, Spotify has introduced a new ‘basic’ plan that drops audiobooks, while increasing the price of its premium offering.
And, finally, in rights news this week, S&S Australia acquired world rights to The Life Experiment, a romance novel from Melbourne-based author Jess Kitching; S&S imprint Scribner Australia acquired ANZ and UK rights to Kumanjayi: Death and indifference by First Nations journalist Jack Latimore; PRH imprint Dial Books for Younger Readers acquired North American rights to Judith Rossell’s forthcoming illustrated middle-grade novel The Midwatch; UQP acquired world rights to Rachel Morton’s debut novel, The Sun Was Electric Light, which won the 2024 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript; Upswell acquired world rights to Jessica White’s collection Silence Is My Habitat: Ecobiological essays; Affirm Press has acquired world rights to Kate Solly’s second novel, The Paradise Heights Craft Store Stitch-Up; and Pantera has acquired world rights to Nicole Madigan’s nonfiction work Torn.
Category: This week’s news
