The 2023 Banjo Prize shortlist for unpublished Australian fiction

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The 2023 Banjo Prize shortlist for unpublished Australian fiction

7 September 2023

The shortlist for the 2023 Banjo Prize, for unpublished Australian fiction, was announced on Tuesday 5 September 2023, and includes the manuscripts of five writers:

Lou and I, by Anna Fursland
Islands of Secrets, by Stefanie Koens
The Shores Between, by A’Mhara McKey
The Sister Tree, by Natasha Neary
Katherine Papadakis is Figuring Things Out, by Christina Pontos

The winner of the prize, which is presented annually by HarperCollins Australia, will have the opportunity to see their work published. The winner will be named on Tuesday 26 September 2023.

The Conversion, a new book by Amanda Lohrey, past Miles Franklin winner

6 September 2023

The Conversion by Amanda Lohrey, book cover

Book cover of The Conversion, by Amanda Lohrey.

Tasmanian based Australian author, and winner of the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Amanda Lohrey, has written a new novel, The Conversion, which will be published by Text Publishing, in October 2023. The story follows a couple, Zoe and Nick, who set about converting a deconsecrated church into a home:

The conversion was Nick’s idea, but it’s Zoe who’s here now, in a valley of old coalmines and new vineyards, working out how to live in a deconsecrated church. What to do with all that vertical space, those oppressive stained-glass windows? Can a church become a home or, even with all its vestiges removed, will it remain forever what it was intended to be?

To date, The Labyrinth, winner of the aforementioned Miles Franklin prize, is the only of Lohrey’s books I’ve read. It was an utterly compelling read though, and I’m looking forward to The Conversion, and possibly even seeing it among nominations for the 2024 Miles Franklin.

The 2023 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award shortlist

5 September 2023

The 2023 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award shortlist was announced yesterday, Monday 4 September 2023, and consists of the following six titles:

An Intimate History of Evolution: The Story of the Huxley Family, by Alison Bashford
Anam, by André Dao
Emperors in Lilliput, by Jim Davidson
The Age of Seeds, by Fiona McMillian-Webster
Life So Full of Promise: further biographies of Australia’s lost generation, by Ross McMullin
Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life, by Brigitta Olubas

First presented in 2002, and also referred to as the Nib Award, the prize honours excellence in literary research, be they works fiction or non-fiction. Past recipients include Helen Garner and Andrew Tink. The 2023 winner, along with this year’s people choice award, will be announced in just over two months time, on Thursday 9 November 2023.

Is book social cataloguing website Goodreads still relevant?

4 September 2023

Canadian author Tajja Isen, writing for The Walrus:

Gradually, things started to go off the rails. My to-read list ballooned alarmingly, not from titles I felt drawn to out of genuine desire but ones the algorithm pushed on me. The thrill of discovery, too, felt compromised: every time my feed told me a friend had added a book that I’d found first, I felt a frisson of annoyance. Have some imagination.

Amazon bought the social cataloguing website in 2013, which some book industry pundits saw as an attempt to stifle potential competition, should the then owners have decided to sell books through the site. Goodreads has remained little changed since Amazon took over.

While I have a page there, I don’t used it a whole lot at the moment. In terms of reading recommendations though, I’ve just about always obtained them from other sources, as I think my reading interests fall way outside the purview of the Goodreads’ algorithms.

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books, literature, novels

Entries for 2024 Stella Prize for Australian literature now open

26 August 2023

It seems like only last week the winner of the 2023 Stella Prize — Sarah Holland-Batt with her poetry collection The Jaquar — was announced, when in fact that happened four months ago.

The year is marching on.

Entries are now open for the 2024 prize, but only for about the next month and a half. There are a few cut-off dates for submissions, but Friday 13 October 2023 is the final day an entry can be made.

From slush pile to bookshop shelf: the secrets of successful unsolicited manuscripts

26 August 2023

We all know the drill. We send — unsolicited — the novel manuscript we’ve spent years toiling over, to a couple of publishing houses who accept them. From there they go into a kind of purgatory called a slush pile. How long manuscripts might spend in this limbo is unknown, but probably just about all of them end up going through the shredder eventually.

Nevertheless, we hold onto hope — hope above all else — of a different fate.

Because not all slush pile works go to pulp. Some Australian authors, including Abby Corson, Shannon Meyerkort, Natasha Sholl, and Mark Smith, have been plucked from the agglomeration and found their way onto a bookshop shelf. Perhaps then what happens in the movies is true. Book publishers have staff who sift through the slush pile, looking for that elusive diamond in the rough.

Take note then. Good writing separates the wheat from the chaff. Manuscripts with eye-catching premises, and engaging opening chapters, might reach the next rung of the ladder.

The 2023 Readings Young Adult Prize shortlist

24 August 2023

The 2023 Readings Young Adult Prize shortlist was announced earlier today. Six titles are in contention for this year’s award:

Dancing Barefoot, by Alice Boyle
If You Could See the Sun, by Ann Liang
Completely Normal (and Other Lies), by Biffy James
Spice Road, by Maiya Ibrahim
The Upwelling, by Lystra Rose
Where You Left Us, by Rhiannon Wilde

Presented annually since 2014 by Readings, an independent Melbourne based bookseller, the Readings Young Adult Prize is awarded to the best contribution to Australian youth literature, by emerging Australian writers. The winner will named at a ceremony in late October this year.

Pulling Weeds, Folding Laundry, a book by Leslie K. Lau

22 August 2023

Sydney based Australian writer and artist Leslie K. Lau recently self-published a book, Pulling Weeds, Folding Laundry. These are tasks many people probably don’t care to think much about, let alone carry out, but Lau saw them in a new light — as moments between moments — while undergoing treatment for cancer:

Ultimately, it is a story of how a cancer diagnosis revealed the reality of life, how volatility and uncertainty was in fact the norm and not the exception.

It is the retelling of a journey of finding peace, contentment, and joy in the moments between moments.

It is a tale of navigating hard times, perceived or otherwise, and coming out the other end.

What a wonderful way to say slow down and appreciate those seemingly insignificant moments in life, since they are still very much a part of it.

Via Justin Fox.

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books, health

2024 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards open for entries

21 August 2023

Entries for the 2024 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (VPLA) are open until Sunday 10 September 2023. The VPLA is one of Australia’s most valuable literary awards, and the shortlists — which will likely be announced sometime in December — are always filled packed with quality titles.

Critic Swallows Book marks 10 years for Sydney Review of Books

14 August 2023

Critic Swallows Book, by Sydney Review of Books, book cover

Book cover of Critic Swallows Book, published by the Sydney Review of Books.

Australian literary criticism journal, the Sydney Review of Books (SRB), has been online for ten years. To mark the occasion, SRB has published a book, Critic Swallows Book, containing twenty-two essays, written by contributors over the past decade:

It includes essays on decolonising Australian literature and revisiting the classics, on blockbuster fiction and book-length poems, on modernism in the Antipodes and reading during the pandemic. Essays on Susan Sontag and Rita Felski sit alongside critical considerations of the work of Murray Bail and Joan London, of new books by Evelyn Araluen and Samia Khatun.

Hmm… Critic Swallows Book, if you think the title is riffing on Boy Swallows Universe, the 2018 novel by Australian author Trent Dalton, I think you’d be right. Catriona Menzies-Pike, editor of Critic Swallows Book, wrote a scathing critique of Boy Swallows Universe for SRB in May 2022.

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