The next J.K. Rowling is an Australian kitchen saleswoman says the Wall Street Journal. C’mon, journalists should know better than this. How many next J.K. Rowlings have we seen over the past five years?
Archive for the ‘Australia’ Category
Tim Winton’s Breath wins Miles Franklin Award
Thursday, June 18th, 2009Congratulations to Tim Winton, whose novel Breath is the winner of this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award.
Mal Peet - Pushing Barriers for Young Readers
Monday, June 8th, 2009
Australian newspaper The Age published an interesting article about British author Mal Peet this weekend.
Peet hates the title of “young-adult writer” and vehemently opposes comments about books being too ambitious, philosophical or complex for a teenage novel. “It’s like saying teenage fiction is a feast of the second best; because your readers are young they have to be given simple, straightforward, spoonfed, cliched bollocks,” he says.
Blind Dates, Book Lovers Style
Monday, February 9th, 2009Cute idea from a library in Australia - Library staff have selected a range of books and wrapped them up for a surprise introductions this weekend. Drop by the library on Saturday and you could meet your perfect match - literary match that is.
With only scintillating phrases and words on that wrapping to hint at the contents you can expect all the excitement and surprise of a traditional blind date.
Don’t expect the books to be packed with Mr Darcys, Heathcliffs and Casanovas because romance isn’t the only genre on offer.
Just like the real thing this literary version of blind dating means that you could be taking home a real winner - or not, but at the very least there will be no guilt about taking home your date after such a short courtship.
Australia’s Literary Culture
Monday, December 22nd, 2008I was surprised to learn that in Australia, if a book doesn’t become available within 30 days of publication overseas, a bookseller can ignore territorial copyright and parallel import it. Such a rule provides incentive to publishers to make 
foreign books quickly available in Australia and gives a flexibility to booksellers that other countries don’t have.
Read more about this 30-day rule and other aspects of copyright laws on The Australian web site.
David Malouf wins Australia-Asia Literary Award
Friday, November 21st, 2008
David Malouf has won Australia’s newest and richest literary prize of $110,000 for his work The Complete Stories. It is given by the Western Australian state government to the best work of fiction primarily about Australia and Asia.
The interesting bit about the award is that it is state funded but doesn’t necessarily go to an Australian.
“It’s a wonderful piece of writing, a combination of decades of work, and it captures the human condition in such a deep and intense way,” said Nury Vittachi, a member of the judging panel, along with the Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie, and the Australian critic Peter Craven.
“His characters are very ordinary people and he captures the intense joys and sadness of ordinary life.”
The Complete Stories spans Malouf’s career, containing all the stories in his collections Dream Stuff (2000) and Every Move You Make plus 1985’s Antipodes and the two shorter pieces from Child’s Play (1982).
Vittachi agreed the decision to award the prize to a book of short stories was unusual.
“It might usually go to a novel. But there’s an ancient story form called a bracelet, where you have a sequence of stand-alone stories which when read together have as much power as a single, united novel. We thought this book worked as just such a bracelet.”
Full story from the Sydney Morning Herald
Byron Bay Writers Festival
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008For all our Australian friends the line-up for this years Byron Bay Writers Festival (July 25-27) has been announced… as always it looks like quite the event.