APA expands Open Book; Shand resigns from SWF; Readings to open in Chadstone; CBCA Notables, International Booker longlist announced
In news this week, the APA has announced an expanded Open Book Internship Program, including a Brisbane-based internship for the first time; while Sydney Writers’ Festival board chair Kathy Shand has tendered her resignation after 12 years on the festival’s board.
The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) released its 2025 list of Notable Books, which also function as a longlist for the CBCA Book of the Year Awards, with winners to be announced later this year, following the release of a shortlist next month.
Book lovers in Victoria and South Australia have new places to browse: Readings has announced a shopfront in Melbourne’s Chadstone Shopping Centre, opening in late March, and Peninsula Records and Books is now open on the Yorke Peninsula.
In a feature this week, Books+Publishing managing editor Ange Glindemann digs deeper into the ‘Understanding Australian Readers’ report, released by Australia Reads and Monash University’s BehaviourWorks research enterprise earlier this month.
Meanwhile, in awards news, Cameron Stewart’s Why Do Horses Run? (A&U) won the 2025 MUD Literary Prize; the Australian Crime Writers Association named KT Major’s story ‘Bitter’ the winner of the 2025 Louie Award for short crime fiction; Kill Your Darlings announced its inaugural flash fiction prize, with a cash prize of $1000 for the winner; Jonathan Ricketson is the Australian Book Review‘s 2025 Rising Star, an accolade that highlights young writers and critics; and finally, in Aotearoa New Zealand, the 2025 NZ Booklovers Awards shortlists have been announced.
Among acquisitions this week is a new novel by Michael Winkler (the author of Grimmish), which has been acquired by Text; Griefdogg follows a man who decides to live as a family pet. Both Affirm and A&U announced crime acquisitions: Michael Brissenden’s outback noir thriller Dust and Vikki Petraitis’s second Antigone Pollard novel, The Stolen, respectively. A&U also acquired debut novel Very Impressive for Your Age by Eleanor Kirk. Simon & Schuster Australia also announced two acquisitions this week: world rights to Olympic gold medallist and BMX champion Saya Sakakibara’s memoir, and world English rights to How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates by Shailee Thompson, the latter of which went to newly announced imprint Atria Books Australia.
Overseas, the 2025 International Prize for Arabic Fiction shortlist and the International Booker longlist have been announced. In the UK, Bonnier Books UK named Sarah Benton and Jonathan Perdoni as joint CEOs of the organisation, following the announcement of the upcoming departure of current CEO Perminder Mann. In the US, Readerlink announced it will stop distributing mass market paperbacks to its accounts at the end of 2025, leaving the future of the format in doubt. Also in the US, the Associated Press reported that the man accused of the attempted murder of Salman Rushdie has been found guilty, and will now await sentencing.
Category: This week’s news
