Longlist Announced for the 2018 Inky Awards

We’re so excited to be able to share the 2018 Inky Awards longlist with you!

The longlist of 10 Australian and 10 international YA titles was selected by a panel of past Inky Awards judges, the Dog’s Advisory Board and Inside a Dog alumni, all young readers aged between 12 and 20 years.

The 2018 Inky Awards Longlists are:

Gold Inky Award - Australian titles

• Begin, End, Begin: A #LoveOzYA Anthology edited by Danielle Binks 
• In the Dark Spaces by Cally Black
• Take Three Girls by Cath Crowley, Simmone Howell & Fiona Wood
• Beautiful Mess by Claire Christian
• Ida by Alison Evans
• Wreck by Fleur Ferris
• A Shadow’s Breath by Nicole Hayes
• Remind Me How This Ends by Gabrielle Tozer
• Paper Cranes Don’t Fly by Peter Vu  
• Ballad for a Mad Girl by Vikki Wakefield

Silver Inky Award - International titles

• The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli
• Turtles All The Way Down by John Green
• The Loneliest Girl in the Universe by Lauren James
• Still Life with Tornado by A.S. King
• The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee
• Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart
• Warcross by Marie Lu
• One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
• Release by Patrick Ness
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

But they need you to make this year’s Inky Awards the biggest one ever!

But how can you get involved?

Wanted: 2018 Inky Awards Judges

Applications are now open for the 2018 Inky Awards judging panel. Judges should be between 12 and 18 years old, live in Australia, and – above all – love books and reading!

If you are a bookish teen or have a bookish teen in your life, please encourage them to apply! Applications close at 9am AEST on Monday 26 March.

Wanted: 2018 Shadow Judges

Applications are also open for the inaugural Inky Awards Shadow Judges. These teens will be sent five of the longlist titles to read, react and/or review for the new Inside a Dog website (to be launched very soon.) Applications close at 9am AEST on Monday 26 March.

You can apply for both programs.

Shortlist Announced for the 2018 Stella Prize

On International Women’s Day, the Stella Prize is delighted to announce the six extraordinary books by Australian women on the 2018 Stella Prize shortlist.

The 2018 Stella Prize shortlist is:

• The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar (Fiction, Wild Dingo Press)
• Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman (Fiction, Hachette Australia)
• The Life to Come by Michelle de Krestser (Fiction, Allen & Unwin)
• An Uncertain Grace by Krissy Kneen (Fiction, Text Publishing)
• The Fish Girl by Mirandi Riwoe (Novella, Seizure)
• Tracker by Alexis Wright (Non-Fiction, Giramondo) 

Fiona Stager, chair of the 2018 judging panel, says:
 
“The six titles shortlisted for the 2018 Stella Prize showcase the incredible breadth of talent in the writing by women in Australia today. The personal interweaves seamlessly with the political as these authors investigate the past, examine the present and re-imagine our future. Ideas about family, identity in all its forms, and politics at both its most profound and intimate levels are themes that connect these six diverse, engaging and original books.”

Longlist Announced for the 2018 Women's Prize for Fiction

We’re thrilled to reveal the sixteen brilliant books that make up the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist on International Women’s Day!

Picked by our fantastic 2018 judging panel, the longlist honours both new and well-established writers and a range of genres, spanning four continents and including six debut novels.

Sarah Sands, 2018 chair of judges and Editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme said: “The longlist came out of a Chequers style meeting where different views were accommodated and peace reigned, at least for now,” commented Sarah Sands, Chair of Judges. “What is striking about the list, apart from the wealth of talent, is that women writers refuse to be pigeon-holed. We have searing social realism, adventure, comedy, poetic truths, ingenious plots and unforgettable characters. Women of the world are a literary force to be reckoned with.”

The longlisted books are as follows:

H(A)PPY by Nicola Barker
The Idiot by Elif Batuman
Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon
Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
Sight by Jessie Greengrass
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy
Elmet by Fiona Mozley
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt
A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
The Trick to Time by Kit de Waal
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Longlist Annouced for the 2018 Stella Prize

Stella is delighted to announce the 2018 Stella Prize longlist  of powerful books by Australian women.

In a year when women’s voices are demanding to be heard, the 2018 Stella Prize longlist showcases the power and diversity of writing by women in Australia. The determination required to create change, and the political necessity of telling our own stories, shines through in the fiction and nonfiction of this year’s list. Many authors on the longlist explore the importance of narrative for both our understanding of the past and our imaginings of the future. The prominence of books by smaller independent publishers speaks to the vibrancy of Australian publishing, and the longlist as a whole is a testament to the potency of women’s writing in Australia today.

The 2018 Stella Prize shortlist will be announced on International Women’s Day, Thursday 8 March, and the 2018 Stella Prize winner will be announced on Thursday 12 April.

THE LONGLIST FOR THE STELLA PRIZE 2018 IS:

• The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar (Fiction, Wild Dingo Press)
• A Writing Life: Helen Garner and Her Work by Bernadette Brennan (Non-Fiction, Text Publishing)
• Anaesthesia: The Gift of Oblivion and the Mystery of Consciousness by Kate Cole-Adams (Non-Fiction, Text Publishing)
• Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman (Fiction, Hachette Australia)
• The Life to Come by Michelle de Krestser (Fiction, Allen & Unwin)
• This Water: Five Tales by Beverley Farmer (Fiction,. Giramondo)
• The Green Bell: A Memoir of Love. Madness and Poetry by Paula Keogh (Non-Fiction, Affirm Press)
• An Uncertain Grace by Krissy Kneen (Fiction, Text Publishing)
• The Choke by Sofie Laguna (Fiction, Allen & Unwin)
• Martin Sharp: His Life and Times by Joyce Morgan (Non-Fiction, Allen & Unwin)
• The Fish Girl by Mirandi Riwoe (Novella, Seizure)
• Tracker by Alexis Wright (Non-Fiction, Giramondo) 

Costa Book Awards Winners 2017

Congratulations to the winners of the 2017 Costa Book Awards.

These awards honour some of the most outstanding books of the year written by authors based in the UK and Ireland, across five different categories.

First novel:
The winner is Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.

Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything. One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life.

---

Novel:
The winner is Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor.

Midwinter in the early years of this century. A teenage girl on holiday has gone missing in the hills at the heart of England. The villagers are called up to join the search, fanning out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on their usually quiet home. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed. The search for the missing girl goes on, but so does everyday life. As it must.

---

Biography:
The winner is In the Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott.

As Rebecca Stott’s father lay dying he begged her to help him write the memoir he had been struggling with for years. He wanted to tell the story of their family, who, for generations had all been members of a fundamentalist Christian sect. Yet, each time he reached a certain point, he became tangled in a thicket of painful memories and could not go on. Rebecca gathers the broken threads of her father’s story, and her own, and follows him into the thicket to tell of her family’s experiences within the sect, and the decades-long aftermath of their breaking away.

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Poetry
The winner is Inside the Wave by Helen Dunmore.

To be alive is to be inside the wave, always travelling until it breaks and is gone. These poems are concerned with the borderline between the living and the dead – the underworld and the human living world – and the exquisitely intense being of both. They possess a spare, eloquent lyricism as they explore the bliss and anguish of the voyage.

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Children’s Books:
The winner is The Explorer by Katherine Rundell.

After crashing hundreds of miles from civilisation in the Amazon rainforest, Fred, Con, Lila and Max are utterly alone and in grave danger. They have no food, no water and no chance of being rescued. But they are alive and they have hope. As they negotiate the wild jungle they begin to find signs that something – someone – has been there before them. Could there possibly be a way out after all?

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One of the five category winners will also be named Book of the Year at a ceremony in London on January 30. Read more about the Costa book awards here.

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Longlist Announced for the 2018 Indie Book Awards

Australian independent booksellers have announced their Longlist for the Indie Book Awards 2018!
 
In 2018, we’re celebrating 10 years of the Indie Book Awards. The Awards recognise and celebrate the indie booksellers as the number one supporters of Australian authors. Since the Awards inception ten years ago, Indies have a well-deserved reputation for picking the best of the best in Australian writing. Past Book of the Year winners have gone on to be bestsellers and win other major literary awards. Previous winners include: The Dry by Jane Harper; The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood; The Bush by Don Watson; The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan; The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman; All That I Am by Anna Funder; The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do; Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey; and Breath by Tim Winton.

The Longlist for the Indie Book Awards 2018 IS:

FICTION LONGLIST

• A Long Way from Home by Peter Carey (Penguin Random House)
• The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser (Allen & Unwin)
• First Person by Richard Flanagan (Penguin Random House)
• Force of Nature by Jane Harper (Pan Macmillan Australia)
• The Choke by Sofie Laguna (Allen & Unwin)
• The Passage of Love by Alex Miller (Allen & Unwin)
• The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham (Hachette Australia)
• Taboo by Kim Scott (Pan Macmillan Australia)
• On the Java Ridge by Jock Serong (Text Publishing)
• City of Crows by Chris Womersley (Pan Macmillan Australia)

NON-FICTION LONGLIST

• Danger Music by Eddie Ayres (Allen & Unwin)
• Working Class Man by Jimmy Barnes (HarperCollins Australia)
• The Museum of Words by Georgia Blain (Scribe Publications)
• Saga Land by Richard Fidler and Kari Gislason (ABC Books, HarperCollins Australia)
• Mrs Kelly by Grantlee Kieza (ABC Books, HarperCollins Australia)
• The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein (Text Publishing)
• Call of the Reed Warbler by Charles Massy (University of Queensland Press)
• Detours by Tim Rogers (HarperCollins Australia)
• First, We Make the Beast Beautiful by Sarah Wilson (Pan Macmillan Australia)
• Tracker by Alexis Wright (Giramondo Publishing)

DEBUT FICTION

• The Dark Lake by Sarah Bailey (Allen & Unwin)
• Wimmera by Mark Brandi (Hachette Australia)
• Australia Day by Melanie Cheng (Text Publishing)
• Terra Nullius by Claire Coleman (Hachette Australia)
• The Last Man in Europe by Dennis Glover (Black Inc.)
• The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club by Sophie Green (Hachette Australia)
• To Become a Whale by Ben Hobson (Allen & Unwin)
• Storyland by Catherine McKinnon (HarperCollins Australia)
• See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt (Hachette Australia)
• Half Wild by Pip Smith (Allen & Unwin)

ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION

• Maggie's Recipe For Life by Maggie Beer with Professor Ralph Martins (Simon & Schuster Australia)
• Ostro by Julia Busuttil Nishimura (Pan Macmillan Australia)
• Ferment by Holly Davis (Murdoch Books)
• Cornersmith: Salads and Pickles by Alex Elliott-Howery & Sabine Spindler (Murdoch Books)
• Native: Art & Design with Australian Plants by Kate Herd & Jela Ivankovic-Waters (Thames & Hudson Australia)
• Paris: Through a Fashion Eye by Megan Hess (Hardie Grant Books)
• Beyond the Rock by Janelle McCulloch (Bonnier Publishing Australia)
• Hummus & Co by Michael Rantissi & Kristy Frawley (Murdoch Books)
• Dreamscapes by Claire Takacs (Hardie Grant Books)
• Flowersmith by Jennifer Tran (Hardie Grant Books)

CHILDREN’S

• Pig the Star by Aaron Blabey (Scholastic Australia)
• Mopoke by Philip Bunting (Scholastic Australia)
• I'm Australian Too by Mem Fox & Ronojoy Ghosh (Illus) (Scholastic Australia)
• The Very Noisy Baby by Alison Lester (Affirm Press)
• I Just Ate My Friend by Heidi McKinnon (Allen & Unwin)
• Tales From a Tall Forest by Shaun Micallef (Hardie Grant Egmont)
• The Extremely Inconvenient adventures of Bronte Mettlestone by Jaclyn Moriarty (Allen & Unwin)
• Polly and Buster: The Wayward Witch and the Feelings Monster by Sally Rippin (Hardie Grant Egmont)
• Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend (Hachette Australia)
• Florette by Anna Walker (Penguin Random House)

YOUNG ADULT

• Take Three Girls by Cath Crowley, Fiona Wood & Simmone Howell (Pan Macmillan Australia)
• Beautiful Mess by Claire Christian (Text Publishing)
• Wilder Country by Mark Smith (Text Publishing)
• Untidy Towns by Kate O'Donnell (University of Queensland Press)
• Sparrow by Scot Gardner (Allen & Unwin)
• The Silent Invasion by James Bradley (Pan Macmillan Australia)
• Finding Nevo by Nevo Zisin (Walker Books Australia)
• Draekora by Lynette Noni (Pantera Press)
• My Life as a Hashtag by Gabrielle Williams (Allen & Unwin)
• The Secret Science of Magic by Melissa Keil (Hardie Grant Egmont)

The Shortlist will be announced on 15 January 2018, with the Category Winners and the Overall Book of the Year Winner being announced at the Leading Edge Books Annual Conference Awards Dinner to be held on Monday 26 March, 2018 in Hobart, TAS. 2018 marks the 10th anniversary of the Indie Book Awards. Come and celebrate with us.

The winners of the 2017 Prime Minister's Literary Awards have been announced!

Shortlisted authors, illustrators, judges and invited guests gathered at Parliament House in Canberra today where this year’s winners were announced by Minister for the Arts, Senator the Hon Mitch Fifield.

Acknowledging the extraordinary contributions literature makes to Australia’s cultural and intellectual landscape, the Minister thanked the 15 judges who had the enormous task of considering more than 450 entries and congratulated the winners and shortlistees.

The winners are:

FICTION: Their Brilliant Careers, Ryan O’Neill

POETRY: Headwaters, Anthony Lawrence

NON-FICTION: Quicksilver, Nicolas Rothwell

AUSTRALIAN HISTORY: Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story, Elizabeth Tynan

YOUNG ADULT: Words in Deep Blue, Cath Crowley

CHILDREN’S – JOINT WINNERS: Dragonfly Song, Wendy Orr and Home in the Rain, Bob Graham

Natalie's Top 5 for 2017

Natalie has been absolutely devouring books this year, and here is her top five!!

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

From the New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.

I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.
In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as "wildly undisciplined," Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care.

In Hunger, she explores her past-including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life-and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.

With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved-in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death by Maggie O'Farrell

An extraordinarily intimate memoir of the the brushes with death that have made Maggie O'Farrell the woman and the writer she is today, for readers of The Last Act of Love and When Breath Becomes Air.

I Am, I Am, I Am is Sunday Times bestseller and Costa Novel-Award winner Maggie O'Farrell's electric and shocking memoir of the near death experiences that have punctuated her life; it will appeal to readers of Cheryl Strayed's Wild or Joan Didion's A Year of Magical Thinking.

A childhood illness she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. A terrifying encounter on a remote path. A mismanaged labour in an understaffed hospital.

This is a memoir with a difference: seventeen encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal to us a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots. It is a book to make you question yourself: what would you do if your life was in danger? How would you react? And what would you stand to lose?

I Am, I Am, I Am is a book you will finish newly conscious of your own vulnerability, and determined to make every heartbeat count.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

A compulsive, brilliant novel about race, identity, family and secrets for fans of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith.

The brilliant new novel by the author of the New York Times bestseller, Everything I Never Told You.

Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principal is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren an enigmatic artist and single mother who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the alluring mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When the Richardsons' friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town and puts Mia and Mrs. Richardson on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Mrs. Richardson becomes determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs to her own family and Mia's.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of long-held secrets and the ferocious pull of motherhood-and the danger of believing that planning and following the rules can avert disaster, or heartbreak.

'I read Little Fires Everywhere in a single, breathless sitting' Jodi Picoult

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me by Bill Hayes

A moving celebration of what Bill Hayes calls "the evanescent, the eavesdropped, the unexpected" of life in New York City, and an intimate glimpse of his relationship with the late Oliver Sacks.

Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city's incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.

And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbor, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance "I don't so much fear death as I do wasting life," he tells Hayes early on is captured in funny and touching vignettes throughout. What emerges is a portrait of Sacks at his most personal and endearing, from falling in love for the first time at age seventy-five to facing illness and death (Sacks died of cancer in August 2015). Insomniac City is both a meditation on grief and a celebration of life. Filled with Hayes's distinctive street photos of everyday New Yorkers, the book is a love song to the city and to all who have felt the particular magic and solace it offers.

"A beautifully written once-in-a-lifetime book, about love, about life, soul, and the wonderful loving genius Oliver Sacks, and New York, and laughter and all of creation." - Anne Lamott

Tin Man by Sarah Winman

The unforgettable and achingly tender new novel from Sarah Winman, author of the international bestseller When God was a Rabbit and the Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller A Year of Marvellous Ways.

It begins with a painting won in a raffle: fifteen sunflowers, hung on the wall by a woman who believes that men and boys are capable of beautiful things.

And then there are two boys, Ellis and Michael, who are inseparable. And the boys become men, and then Annie walks into their lives, and it changes nothing and everything.

Tin Man sees Sarah Winman follow the acclaimed success of When God was a Rabbit and A Year of Marvellous Ways with a love letter to human kindness and friendship, loss and living.

Costa Book Awards shortlists 2017

The Costa Book Awards honour some of the most outstanding books of the year written by authors based in the UK and Ireland. There are five categories – First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book – with one of the five winners chosen as Book of the Year.

Dominic Paul, managing director of Costa, says: ‘These shortlists are a showcase of everything the Costa book awards celebrate: terrific books with broad appeal that will be enjoyed by readers of all tastes.’

Here are the shortlistees in each category.

Novel

• Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor
• Under a Pole Star by Stef Penney
• Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
• Tin Man by Sarah Winman

First novel

• The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times by Xan Brooks
• Montpelier Parade by Karl Geary
• Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
• The Haunting of Henry Twist by Rebecca F John

Biography

• Once Upon a Time in the East: A Story of Growing Up by Xiaolu Guo
• A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Rossellis and the Fight Against Mussolini by Caroline Moorehead
• In the Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott
• Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table by Stephen Westaby

Poetry

• Kumukanda by Kayo Chingonyi
• Inside the Wave by Helen Dunmore
• On Balance by Sinéad Morrissey
• Useful Verses by Richard Osmond

Children’s books

• Moonrise by Sarah Crossan
• Wed Wabbit by Lissa Evans
• The Island at the End of Everything by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
• The Explorer by Katherine Rundell

The category winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on 2 January, 2018, and the overall winner will be revealed on 30 January, 2018. Read more about the Costa book awards here.

2017 Most Underrated Book Award

The Invisible War wins the 2017 Most Underrated Book Award

A fascinating graphic novel about microbes has been named the winner of year’s Most Underrated Book Award (MUBA). Now in its sixth year, this is a unique prize run by the Small Press Network (SPN) that celebrates hidden gems – engaging and creative books across all genres that deserve to reach a wider audience.

The Invisible War by Ailsa Wild, Briony Barr, Gregory Crocetti, Ben Huchings and Jeremy Barr is a one-of-a-kind publication, funded through a Pozible campaign, created by a team of writers, illustrators and scientists, and combining the format and narrative of a graphic novel with science education writing.

The story opens in France, 1916. While treating a patient with dysentery, Sister Annie Barnaby encounters a strain of lethal bacteria. As the invaders journey deep into her gut, the resident microbes must fight to survive. Annie’s life hangs in the balance. Enter the phage, deadly predators, ready to wage war to protect their host.

The 2017 judging panel, which includes Toni Jordan, Sarah L’Estrange and Megan O’Brien, said: ‘A graphic novel about dysentery during WWI doesn’t sound like the makings of an engaging work, but The Invisible War is a cleverly created comic that’s informative, interesting and surprising…. In this book, even the bacteria go “ka-boom”. The Invisible War is an educational and entertaining book and demonstrates an exciting style of science writing that is far from textbook.’

The Invisible War is published by Scale Free Network. Publisher and co-creator Gregory Crocetti says: ‘We’re thrilled to have won the Most Underrated Book Award. This award means a lot to a tiny publisher like ourselves, who are able to take risks to creative innovative new works, but simply don’t have the marketing budget and networks to promote it.’

The Invisible War was shortlisted alongside three other terrific books: The Island Will Sink by Briohny Doyle (Brow Books), Loopholes by Susan McCreery (Spineless Wonders) and Horse Island by Christina Laidley Kennedy and Jason Busch (Zabriskie Books).

The MUBA 2017 is sponsored by the Australian Booksellers Association. Find out more about the prize here.

Winners of the National Book Awards 2017

2017 Fiction Winner

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

13-year-old Jojo and his younger sister Kayla live with their grandparents in rural Mississippi. When their father, a white man, is released from prison, their mother Leonie packs the children into her car with a friend, and together they set off to collect the man she loves with a toxic passion. Rich with Jesmyn Ward’s distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first century America.

As an added note, Ward has previously won the National Book Award for Fiction for her first novel, Salvage the Bones.

2017 Nonfiction Winner

The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen

Masha Gessen follows the lives of four Russians, born as the Soviet Union crumbled, at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children or grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own - as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers and writers, sexual and social beings. A powerful and urgent cautionary tale by contemporary Russia’s most fearless inquisitor.

2017 Poetry Winner

Half-light by Frank Bidart

Gathered together, the poems of Frank Bidart perform one of the most remarkable transmutations of the body into language in contemporary literature. His pages represent the human voice in all its extreme registers, whether it’s that of the child-murderer Herbert White, the obsessive anorexic Ellen West, the tormented genius Vaslav Nijinsky, or the poet’s own. And in that embodiment is a transgressive empathy, one that recognises our wild appetites, the monsters, the misfits, the misunderstood among us and inside us.

2017 Young People’s Literature Winner

Far from the Tree by Robin Benway

After 16-year-old Grace gives up her baby for adoption, she decides that the time has come to find out more about her own biological mother. Although her biological mum proves elusive, her search leads her to two half-siblings she never knew existed. When these three siblings come together, they find in themselves the place they can belong, while the secrets they guard threaten to explode…

Voss Literary Prize shortlist 2017

This year’s Voss Literary Prize shortlist has been announced and includes four debut novels. Our congratulations to the six shortlisted authors and publishers.

Launched in 2014, the Voss Literary Prize is awarded to the best novel published in Australia in the previous year, and is dedicated to the memory of historian Vivian Robert Le Vaux Voss.

The full 2017 shortlist is:

• Dodge Rose by Jack Cox 
• Our Magic Hour by Jennifer Down
• Our Tiny, Useless Hearts by Toni Jordan 
• Music and Freedom by Zoë Morrison 
• The Last Days of Ava Langdon by Mark O’Flynn
• A loving, faithful animal by Josephine Rowe

For more information about the 2017 shortlist, please visit the Voss Literary Prize website.

Most Underrated Book Award (MUBA) shortlist 2017

The Small Press Network (SPN) have announced the four titles shortlisted for the 2017 Most Underrated Book Award (MUBA). Open to all members of the Small Press Network, the MUBA is designed to highlight hidden gems – wonderful books that deserve to find a wider audience.

The Invisible War by Ailsa Wild, Briony Barr, Gregory Crocetti, Ben Huchings & Jeremy Barr

France, 1916. While treating a patient with dysentery, Sister Annie Barnaby encounters a strain of lethal bacteria. As the invaders journey deep into her gut, the resident microbes must fight to survive. Annie’s life hangs in the balance. Enter the phage, deadly predators, ready to wage war to protect their host. Created by a team of scientists, artists, educators, writers & historians, The Invisible War is a graphic novel like no other.

The Invisible War is published by Scale Free Network.

Loopholes by Susan McCreery

This collection of microfiction provides glimpses into the everyday challenges of family life, relationships, ageing and loss. The characters are typical humans – flawed, vulnerable, frustrating and frustrated. Told with empathy and wit, and honed with a wordsmith’s skill, Loopholes makes us see ourselves and each other differently.

Loopholes is published by Spineless Wonders.

The Island Will Sink by Briohny Doyle

This work of science fiction is set in the not-too-distant future in which we are perpetually on the brink of collapse, and catastrophe is our most popular entertainment. The energy crisis has come and gone. EcoLaw is enforced by insidious cartoon panda bears and their armies of viral-marketing children. The world watches as Pitcairn Island sinks into the Pacific, wondering if this, finally, will be the end of everything. And in the midst of it all, Max Galleon, anxious family man and blockbuster auteur, lives a life that he cannot remember.

The Island Will Sink is published by Brow Books.

Horse Island by Christina Laidley Kennedy and Jason Busch

Horse Island, the private retreat of Christina and Trevor Kennedy, sits tucked away in an estuary of Tuross Lake on the South Coast of NSW. It is a stunning location but what is most surprising in this place of great natural beauty is the remarkable garden created by Christina, featuring only Australian indigenous plants. This book is the author’s inspiring gardening story, and features gorgeous photography by Jason Busch.

Horse Island is published by Zabriskie Books.

The MUBA 2017 is sponsored by the Australian Booksellers Association. The winner will be announced during SPN’s Independent Publishing Conference in Melbourne on Friday 17 November 2017.

George Saunders wins the 2017 Man Booker Prize for Fiction

Congratulations to George Saunders who has been named the winner of this year’s Man Booker Prize for Fiction!

Lincoln in the Bardo is the first novel from Saunders, who is internationally renowned for his short stories, and it is an extraordinary work.

As the American Civil War rages, President Lincoln’s beloved 11-year-old son lies gravely ill. In a matter of days, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy’s body. From this seed of historical truth, Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of realism, entering a thrilling, supernatural domain both hilarious and terrifying.

Chair of 2017 judges, Baroness Lola Young, writes: ‘The form and style of this utterly original novel, reveals a witty, intelligent, and deeply moving narrative. This tale of the haunting and haunted souls in the afterlife of Abraham Lincoln’s young son paradoxically creates a vivid and lively evocation of the characters that populate this other world. Lincoln in the Bardo is both rooted in, and plays with history, and explores the meaning and experience of empathy.’

Alongside Lincoln in the Bardo, the shortlist included 4321 by Paul Auster, History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, Elmet by Fiona Mozley, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders and Autumn by Ali Smith.

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a £50,000 prize literary prize awarded each year for the best original novel, written in the English language, and published in the UK.

Baillie Gifford Prize shortlist 2017

The £30,000 Baillie Gifford prize (formerly known as the Samuel Johnson prize) is the UK’s most prestigious award for nonfiction writing. This year’s shortlist has been revealed.

Chair of Judges, Sir Peter Bazalgette, says: ‘The exceptional shortlist for the 2017 Baillie Gifford Prize covers religion, culture, science and sexuality… and that’s just for starters. But what all the six books have in common is that they’re incredibly well-written, they’re really enjoyable and they tell great stories.’

The 2017 shortlist includes:

The Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason by Christopher de Bellaigue
How to Survive A Plague by David France
Border: A Journey to The Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova
An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and An Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn
To Be A Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Mark O’Connell
Belonging: The Story of The Jews, 1492-1900 by Simon Schama
Each of the shortlisted authors will receive £1,000 and the 2017 winner will be announced on 16 November.

Kazuo Ishiguro wins the 2017 Nobel prize in literature

This year’s Nobel prize for literature has been awarded to Kazuo Ishiguro.

Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and moved with his family to England when he was five. He is the author of seven novels, four of which have have been nominated for the Man Booker Prize including The Remains of the Day which went on to win the prestigious prize in 1989. Ishiguro is also the writer of short stories, and screenplays.

The Swedish Academy praises Ishiguro, ‘who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world’.

National Book Awards shortlists 2017

The shortlists for this year’s National Book Awards have been announced. Congratulations to all the finalists.

2017 Fiction Shortlist

• Dark at the Crossing by Elliot Ackerman
• The Leavers by Lisa Ko
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
• Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

2017 Nonfiction Shortlist

• Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
• The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America by Frances FitzGerald
• The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen
• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
• Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean

2017 Poetry Shortlist

• Half-light by Frank Bidart
• The Book of Endings by Leslie Harrison
• WHEREAS by Layli Long Soldier
• In the Language of My Captor by Shane McCrae
• Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith

2017 Young People’s Literature Shortlist

• What Girls Are Made Of by Elana K. Arnold
• Far from the Tree by Robin Benway
• I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez
• Clayton Byrd Goes Underground by Rita Williams-Garcia
• American Street by Ibi Zoboi

2017 5 Under 35 Honorees

• Lesley Nneka Arimah, author of What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky
• Halle Butler, author of Jillian
• Zinzi Clemmons, author of What We Lose
• Leopoldine Core, author of When Watched
• Weike Wang, author of Chemistry

2017 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

• Annie Proulx

2017 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community

• Scholastic Chairman, President & CEO Richard Robinson

Winners of the Inky Awards 2017

The Centre for Youth Literature has announced the winners of the 2017 Inky Awards!

The Inky Awards recognise high-quality young adult literature, with the shortlist selected by young adults, and the winners voted for online by teens. There are two awards: the Gold Inky Award for an Australian book, and the Silver Inky Award for an international book.

Gold Inky Award

The Gold Inky Award winner is Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley.

Words in Deep Blue is a love story. It’s the story of Howling Books, where readers write letters to strangers, to lovers, to poets, to words. It’s the story of Henry Jones and Rachel Sweetie. They were best friends once, before Rachel moved to the sea.

Now, she’s back, working at the bookstore, grieving for her brother Cal. She’s looking for the future in the books people love, and the words that they leave behind.

Silver Inky Award

The Silver Inky Award is Radio Silence by Alice Oseman.

Frances has always been a study machine with one goal, elite university. Nothing will stand in her way; not friends, not a guilty secret - not even the person she is on the inside. But when Frances meets Aled, the shy genius behind her favourite podcast, she discovers a new freedom.

Aled unlocks the door to Real Frances and for the first time she experiences true friendship, unafraid to be herself. Then the podcast goes viral and the fragile trust between them is broken…

Man Booker Prize shortlist 2017

Congratulations to the six authors shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize for Fiction!

Chair of 2017 judges, Baroness Lola Young, writes: ‘Playful, sincere, unsettling, fierce: here is a group of novels grown from tradition but also radical and contemporary. The emotional, cultural, political and intellectual range of these books is remarkable, and the ways in which they challenge our thinking is a testament to the power of literature.’

Here is the full shortlist:

• 4321 by Paul Auster
• History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
• Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
• Elmet by Fiona Mozley
• Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
• Autumn by Ali Smith

Find out more about the Man Booker Prize, and the shortlisted titles for 2017 here. This year’s winner will be announced on 17 October and will receive £50,000.