Book People News: Banjo, May Gibbs and Your Chance to Vote

The May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust

“The May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust promotes the creation of contemporary Australian children’s literature in the belief that children’s books, written and illustrated by Australians, are vital to the well-being, creativity and literacy of our children.”

Announcing the May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust 2020 Fellows

• Mark Carthew
• Deb Fitzpatrick
• Sadami Konchi
• Meg McKinlay
• Chrissie Perry
• Michelle Vasiliu

The residential fellowships will take place in Adelaide, Brisbane and Canberra in 2020. More information can be found on the website.

Vote for The Courier-Mail People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award.

Voting is now open for The Courier-Mail People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award. The finalists are chosen from the eligible Queensland-authored nominations in The University of Queensland Fiction Book Award and The University of Queensland Non-Fiction Book Award by the category judges. Voting is open from 30 August to 14 October 2019, with the winner announced at the Queensland Literary Awards ceremony at State Library of Queensland on 12 November. For your chance to vote, click here.

HarperCollins Publishers announces the winner of the 2019 Banjo Prize

HarperCollins Publishers Australia is delighted to announce that the winner of the 2019 Banjo Prize is Elizabeth Flann for her unpublished manuscript Beware of Dogs.

Beware of Dogs is an almost unbearably tense Australian thriller that keeps the reader in suspense from page one.

Anna Valdinger, Fiction Publisher at HarperCollins, says: ‘Beware of Dogs is exactly the sort of page-turning novel we were looking for, and it was a big favourite among the HarperCollins reading team. In one sense, the survival story is reminiscent of Cast Away or The Martian, as Alix has to rely solely on her wits and bushcraft skills in a hostile environment, but through it all looms the terrifying sense of her being hunted. It’s a truly unputdownable thriller and we are so excited to publish it.’

HarperCollins Publishers Australia launched The Banjo Prize for Australian fiction writers in 2018 in a quest to find Australia’s next great storyteller. In 2019, The Banjo Prize received over 240 submissions. Applicants were required to submit a full manuscript of adult commercial fiction, a 500-word synopsis and a 200-word biographical statement.

For more information please visit their site here.