CATEGORIES

Siddon Rock by Australian author Glenda Guest (Vintage) was announced on Thursday 11 March as the winner of the South East Asia and Pacific region of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book.

The Adventures of Vela by Samoan author Albert Wendt (University of Hawaii Press) was the South East Asia and the Pacific regional winner of the CWP Best Book prize.

The two titles will now be in the running for the overall Commonwealth Writers Prize, along with the regional winners of the two categories from Africa, Caribbean and Canada and South Asia and Europe.

The two overall winners will be announced on 12 April in India.

Director of the Commonwealth Foundation Mark Collins said the level of entries this year had been ‘absolutely outstanding’.

Regional chair Anne Brewster said of Siddon Rock: ‘The fable-like quality of this story captures the laconic mannerisms of Australian rural life and gestures to the styles of the tall tale and bush yarn. In Siddon Rock we revisit the myth of the white child lost in the bush with chilling freshness. The novel achieves great narrative momentum and emotional power which concludes in modest but assured optimism.’

She said Wendt’s ‘epic verse novel’ The Adventures of Vela was ‘an exhilarating read. It follows the tumultuous journeys of the ancient human, Vela, as he chronicles the life of Nafanua, the Samoan goddess of war exiled since the colonial invasion of the Samoan islands. Wendt draws upon the immense resources and creative heritage of Samoan cultural memory and spirituality which he combines with a stinging critique of the various institutions of colonisation.’

You can see further information on the eight regional Best Book and Best First Book winners at http://www.commonwealthfoundation.com/.

Last year’s overall winner of the Best Book prize was Christos Tsiolkas for The Slap (A&U).

Source: http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2010/03/15215/

This article from Thorpe Bowker’s Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2009, Thorpe-Bowker.

There’s pirate treasure to be found in Clive Cussler’s seventh book in the ‘Oregon Files’ saga The Silent Sea and an Italian tale of passion, love and magic in Belinda Alexandra’s Tuscan Rose, which were last week’s highest new entries and became this week’s ‘fastest movers’. These two have snuck ahead of Stieg Larsson’s ‘Millennium’ trilogy and accompanying film tie-in, to take the two top spots on the Bestseller charts. The Highest New Entries of this week include Glen McNamara’s story of police corruption in Dirty Work and Danielle Steel’s latest novel One Day at a Time–Weekly Book Newsletter. 

Source: http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2010/03/15182/

This article from Thorpe Bowker’s Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2009, Thorpe-Bowker.

Golden Boy: Kim Hughes and the bad old days of Australian cricket (Christian Ryan, A&U) won Cricket Book of the Year at the British Sports Book Awards.

‘It’s almost as good as beating them on the field!,’ said Allen & Unwin chairman Patrick Gallagher of the win. ‘The judges admitted that it was “tantamount to treason” to reward an Australian cricket book in an Ashes year, but at the end of the day it was “simply too bloody good!”,’ Gallagher told the Weekly Book Newsletter. ‘Allen and Unwin’s UK manager Clare Drysdale told us that she started the evening as an unknown and somewhat lonely Aussie, but by the end of the function there was a queue of poms waiting to shake hands and congratulate her and the author. Now for the Ashes!’

Source: http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2010/03/15208/

This article from Thorpe Bowker’s Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2009, Thorpe-Bowker.

The China Garden by Kristina Olsson (UQP) is the winner of this year’s Barbara Jefferis Award.

The award, administered by the Australian Society of Authors (ASA), is for ‘the best novel written by an Australian author that depicts women and girls in a positive way or otherwise empowers the status of women and girls in society’.

Judges Susan Martin, Gina Mercer and Elizabeth Webby said that ‘unusually for a story about relinquishment and adoption, this fine novel deals with the impact on the mother and her remaining child, rather than her lost one’.

‘It delicately unfolds the ways in which Angela has made a life as a painter in a small coastal community, and has helped, and been healed by, those around her. The title refers to Angela’s garden and its broken pieces of china. This evocative image suggests that beauty can be created from what is broken and apparently irretrievable, but also the danger and sharpness of buried secrets. Kristina Olsson traces different possibilities of mothering, in Angela’s mutually enriching friendship with a young man, Kieran, in Kieran’s relationship with his grandmother, Cress, and in Cress’s tentative friendship with Angela’s daughter. Without feeling the need to resolve every absence or mystery, Olsson gently suggests that it is always possible to make new things out of the past, however fractured or painful.’

Valued at $35,000, the Barbara Jefferis Award was established in 2007 by the ASA and made possible by a bequest from the film critic John Hinde, to commemorate his wife.

Last year’s winning title was The Spare Room by Helen Garner.

The China Garden has also been shortlisted in this year’s Australian Publishers Association Book Design Awards in the ‘best designed literary fiction book’ category.

Source: http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2010/03/15214/

This article from Thorpe Bowker’s Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2009, Thorpe-Bowker.

The titles longlisted for this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award have been announced.

The longlisted titles are:

    * Lovesong (Alex Miller, A&U)
    * The Bath Fugues (Brian Castro, Giramondo Publishing)
    * Jasper Jones (Craig Silvey, A&U)
    * Sons of the Rumour (David Foster, Picador)
    * The Book of Emmett (Deborah Forster, Vintage)
    * Siddon Rock (Glenda Guest, Vintage)
    * Boy on a Wire (Jon Doust, Fremantle Press)
    * Figurehead (Patrick Allington, Black Inc.)
    * Parrot and Olivier in America (Peter Carey, Hamish Hamilton)
    * Truth (Peter Temple, Text Publishing)
    * Butterfly (Sonya Hartnett, Penguin)
    * The People’s Train (Thomas Keneally, Knopf).

This year’s judging panel was made up of Morag Fraser, Richard Neville, Gillian Whitlock, Lesley McKay and Murray Waldren. Said Fraser: ‘It is exciting to discover new voices, and even more so when they are as accomplished and challenging as the debut authors on this year’s Miles Franklin longlist. The newcomers stand alongside some of the great names of Australian literature, writers who have helped define Australian culture and deepen our understanding of ourselves. For range and diversity, this is an outstanding Miles Franklin list.’

Deborah Foster, Glenda Guest and Patrick Allington have all been nominated for debut novels; Alex Miller, Thomas Keneally, Peter Carey and David Foster have all previously won the award.

The award shortlist will be announced in April, with the winner to be awarded at a presentation dinner on 22 June. 

Source: http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2010/03/15206/

This article from Thorpe Bowker’s Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2009, Thorpe-Bowker.

Inspiration is a tricky thing. It comes and goes, and mostly, its habits are unpredictable. If I knew how it all worked, believe me, my second novel would’ve been out by now. Usually someone in front of me has to do something stupid, or something horrible has to happen to me, and when I stop whingeing long enough to laugh and think, ‘Gee, that’d make a great story…’ – inspiration happens, and the words aren’t far off.

I’m not one of those gushing author fanboys who runs up to authors saying, ‘Wow, you inspire me so much.’ In fact, I was saving that baby up for when I met Terry Pratchett for the first time… but I found myself saying it to an author I’d only just met, and whose work I hadn’t read (obviously, since then, I’ve given it more than a glance, and it’s pretty awesome). That author was Patrick Ness, and that was Tuesday.

But our story begins on:

Monday: Melina Marchetta and The Piper’s Son Sydney launch

William Kostakis (moi) with Susanne Gervay

Book launches are great. They’re inspiring. I haven’t been to many (in fact, I’ve been to two, my own – which was pretty darn inspiring – and Melina Marchetta’s). It wasn’t being surrounded by peers in the industry (and making an awkward spectacle of myself as I was introduced to authors I’d been a fan of for a long time, and was trying to remain calm as I told them about a little blog I wrote for) that inspired me.

In fact, blame for inspiration rests solely on Melina Marchetta.

I haven’t known Melina very long. I met her a year ago. I was on a panel with her, scared to death of how I was going to introduce myself to the Melina Marchetta when the closest I’d ever come to reading her books was watching five minutes of Looking For Alibrandi on Channel Ten. So, I approached her, ready with a rehearsed and completely fake, ‘Whoa, your writing shaped my youth!’ (You know, the stuff she hears all the time.) Before I’ve started the spiel, she calls me by my first name (I haven’t introduced myself) and says how much she loved a short story I wrote in high school, and that she used to show it in class when she taught English. Cut to me thinking: ‘Melina… likes… my… writing?’ over and over and over. In fact, before our session, she didn’t even give me time to spew out the spiel. She just kept talking about me. I was struck by how normal, and humble, and nice, someone whose success can only be measured with ‘mega’s could be.

And Book Launch Melina was no different. Someone told me once, you’re not measured by how you handle the bad times, but the grace and humility you exhibit during the good times. There’s no doubting that, with her current career position, Melina is experiencing the good times. And you would never guess it. Having, since the panel, read all of her work, and knowing how successful she’s been (on account of my not living under a rock), I don’t know how someone can be as level-headed as she is.

Her writing inspires me as a writer (I hesitate to use the word ‘fellow’), but her personality, her warmth, and general Melinaness inspires me as a person.

Congratulations, Melina. Everybody here at Boomerang Books wishes you all the best with The Piper’s Son, and we’re already anticipating Book #5.

Tuesday: Patrick Ness speaks at Sydney Uni

To say Patrick Ness is popular would be to understate the fact considerably. I’d never read any of his work, but a lot of you have emailed me about him, so I thought I’d go along to see him speak (my class in the adjacent building finished at 6, he started at 6 – it was practically fate). I went expecting a room filled with teens, but what I found was a room filled with peers, authors I recognised, publishers, editors, and, granted, some teens.

He was a little late. The air was thick with anticipation – you could cut it with a [insert horrible pun with book title here]. Then, showtime.

“I think a reader can tell if the writer is joyous.”

After considering how daunting a task speaking without a topic is, he settled on establishing his own topic: joy. He said he never liked talking about author stuff, and proceeded to talk about his process: joy, joy, joy. To write is to write free of the mechanics of writing, and to just write joy.

It was great to hear such an acclaimed writer (he won the Guardian Prize), talking about writing for young adults like I do, albeit, with more flair, and more experience to back him up. It made me almost feel like I knew what I was talking about…

Namely, if you’re writing for kids: don’t write “lesson” narratives, with “issues” tick-boxes to work your way through, because they don’t equal good novels.

“Write for the teenager you were. If you think you were atypical, well, the point of being a teenager is being atypical.”

He emphasised not worrying about the genre and the audience. Cue the subtle glances from my editor – she was in the row in front, and had told me that exact thing about a bajillion times in the past year.

Just focus on joy.

“Write with joy, everything else will follow.”

The words made me want to whip out my pen and pad right then and there – well, my pen and pad were out (I was taking notes for Boomerangers), so I wanted to turn the page and plough through my new book then and there. He was really quite sensational to hear speak, and judging by what I’ve read of his work since, he has the words to back him up.

He made me want to write again, and not write to get the novel done, but write for joy.

Fans of both Patrick Ness and Melina Marchetta should keep their eyes on the blog, we have some really great prizes for you coming very soon. Signed prizes.

Being awarded an honorary degree by a British university last year prompted Australian author Kathy Lette to explore her family history. Lette reflects on her convict past in Men: A User’s Guide (Bantam). Natasha Solomon’s Mr Rosenblum’s List: Or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman (Sceptre) nabbed four mentions for itself this week, Ian McEwan’s Solar (Jonathan Cape) found itself mentioned in Media Extra three times and Don DeLillo’s Point Omega (Picador) won a spot on our Most Mentioned chart for the second week in a row. Local author Melina Marchetta is doing quite well with the release of her book The Piper’s Son (Viking) as well. Let’s see if this new book resonates with young people as much as her previous books have–Media Extra.

Most mentioned in the Media this week

1 Mr Rosenblum’s List: Or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman, by Natasha Solomon
2 Men: A User’s Guide, by Kathy Lette
3 Piper’s Son, The by Melina Marchetta
4 Point Omega, by Don DeLillo
5 Martin Westley Takes a Walk, by Andrew Humphreys

Source: http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2010/03/15165/

This article from Thorpe Bowker’s Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2009, Thorpe-Bowker.

Reading Destination Saigon, you really feel you’re in good hands. Walter Mason clearly has a passion for Vietnam, its culture, its religions, its language and, perhaps most obviously, its people. Through the telling of little snippettype stories, Mason conveys his deep respect for the Vietnamese and their attitude to life, love, religion, food, booze and the rest. Though at times the titbits seem cut short somehow, the book provides helpful tips about travelling in Vietnam and gives incredible insight into the culture. Mason has clearly spent a lot of time both in Saigon and travelling about the whole country, and he goes both on and off the beaten track, giving his witty commentary on bits and pieces of his journey. With his ‘interfaith leanings’, Mason spends quite a bit of time in monasteries, hanging out with friends and visiting religious sites of all varieties––what he learns is at times laugh-out-loud funny and at times tearfully poignant. The result is a travel book that is not only inspiring in the sense that it makes you desperate to go to the places described, but also in that it gives you a chance to think about humankind in a whole new way.

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine (March 2010, Vol 89, No. 6) is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2009, Thorpe-Bowker.

Pirate Rain is the latest collection of poetry from award winning writer Jennifer Maiden. The 32 poems in this collection explore the gamut of greed and ambition, the political and the personal, delving into such topics as the war on terror, global recession, and Hurricane Katrina. Maiden’s poems straddle a fine line between prose and poetry, rich with dialogue and characters, yet coloured with dexterous poetic touches. There is a sequential narrative that runs through many of the poems in Pirate Rain, and historical figures become characters within Maiden’s lyrical narratives, as in the seven Hillary and Eleanor poems in this collection, featuring Hillary Clinton and Eleanor Roosevelt in a somewhat surreal friendship. This collection sees Maiden explore further political territory with the return of George Jeffreys and his partner Clare in another (almost film-like) sequence of poems. Poetry becomes personal in ‘Diary Poem: Uses of Anger’, where Maiden confronts a critic who attacked her poems, suggesting they are merely diary entries, by exploring a diary entry as a poem. Jennifer Maiden charts unique territory with her often witty voice and individual style. Pirate Rain is a rich collection of poetry that deserves several reads and would sit well on anyone’s poetry shelf.

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine (March 2010, Vol 89, No. 6) is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2009, Thorpe-Bowker.