In junior fiction on offer at Bologna this year, Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing has Monsties: The Lost Bunny (Zanni Louise & Kyla May) featuring Orla, Pearl, Mig, Boo and Oops—five best friend monsters who live in Scaryland, surrounded by scary monsters, but who are hopeless at being scary. They much prefer candy and cupcakes to…

The longlist for the 2021 Stella Prize, worth $50,000, has been announced. The longlisted titles are: Fathoms: The World in the Whale (Rebecca Giggs, Scribe) Revenge: Murder in Three Parts (S L Lim, Transit Lounge) The Animals in That Country (Laura Jean McKay, Scribe) Witness (Louise Milligan, Hachette) Metal Fish, Falling Snow (Cath Moore, Text)…

The longlist for the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award, worth $60,000, has been announced. The 12 longlisted novels are: Amnesty (Aravind Adiga, Picador) The Rain Heron (Robbie Arnott, Text) At the Edge of the Solid World (Daniel Davis Wood, Brio) Our Shadows (Gail Jones, Text) Infinite Splendours (Sofie Laguna, A&U) The Labyrinth (Amanda Lohrey, Text) The Animals…

Pip Williams’s debut novel The Dictionary of Lost Words (Affirm) has been named Book of the Year at the 2021 Indie Book Awards, presented by Leading Edge Books. The winning titles in each category are: Fiction Honeybee (Craig Silvey, A&U) Nonfiction Phosphorescence (Julia Baird, Fourth Estate) Debut fiction The Dictionary of Lost Words (Pip Williams, Affirm) Illustrated nonfiction…

Sophie Splatt, an editor of books for children and young adults at Allen & Unwin for the past decade, is the Australian Publishers Association’s (APA) 2023 Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellow. Her research project will take her to the US and Canada to meet with graphic novel publishers, editors, agents and creators for her research project…

Sisters in Crime Australia has announced the winners of the 2021 Davitt Awards for the best crime books by Australian women. The winners in each category are:  Adult crime novel The Good Sister (Sally Hepworth, Macmillan) Young adult crime novel  Where We Begin (Christie Nieman, Pan) Children’s crime novel A Clue for Clara (Lian Tanner, A&U) Nonfiction crime…

Affirm Press has acquired world rights to a new five-book series by Amelia Mellor as well as the third novel in Mellor’s series that began with The Grandest Bookshop in the World. Set in a fantastical island world that is on the brink of ruin, the new series for readers 8–12 years follows a fiery young…

Coming to you from a country that has seen sales of children’s books boom in recent years, we are so pleased to share news and new books from the world of children’s and YA publishing in Australia in this Bologna issue of Think Australian, which is produced in partnership with the Australian Publishers Association (APA)…