News

Storyathon for Kids Write a microstory that is exactly 100 words. This writing competition is open to children in years 3–8 during each school term. You can submit up to three stories for one competition, and you can enter all or just a few of the competitions run each year.

Kelly Canby’s new book, Littlelight, is already on the reprint list after COVID-19 led Fremantle Press to let our booksellers get the book earlier than its release date. In this e-interview, Kelly tells us more about the book and shares some recent news.

Congratulations to Helen Milroy, author of Backyard Birds and Katie Stewart, author of What Colour is the Sea? for being shortlisted for this year’s Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Awards.

The US edition of I Love Me, published by Andrews McMeel and written and illustrated by Sally Morgan and Ambelin Kwaymullina, has won a 2019 Silver Nautilus Book Award.

Dianne Wolfer and Elaine Forrestal are both well-loved and well-established writers who have published a shelfload of historical children’s fiction between them. Settle in for a great podcast as the pair go in-depth on their writing process, and share tips on how to research and write historical fiction.

Congratulations to Amanda Curtin, Caitlin Maling, Ellen van Neerven, Fiona Burrows, Helen Milroy, Holden Sheppard, Kathryn Lefroy, Meg McKinlay and Rafeif Ismail, whose wonderful work as writers has taken them a step closer to winning a $15,000 cash prize or a fellowship worth $60,000.

Just days before COVID-19 sent us all home, Josephine Taylor and Catherine Noske jumped into the studio with Fremantle Press for an episode of Love To Read Local Radio. The two friends are best known in Western Australia’s literary community as editors of the journal Westerly and as academics and mentors, but this episode provided […]

Would you like some free classroom activities, stickers or bookmarks? Here’s a selection of the latest.

Our authors are still out there running workshops and talking to classrooms online. Read on to find out what’s available in the coming weeks.

Father of the Lost Boys author and former child soldier Yuot A. Alaak says lived experiences have a lot to teach us. He says giving students the opportunity to enter the lives of refugee children in a war, but from a safe distance, can help build empathy and understanding. In this very special blog post, […]

Co-curated with Djed Press and edited by Rafeif Ismail and Ellen van Neerven, Unlimited Futures: Speculative, Visionary Blak+Black Fiction provides the chance for established and emerging First Nations writers and Black writers to share the stories they wish had existed when they were growing up. The project was announced on Saturday 20 June as part […]

This week is Men’s Health Week and we want to help shine a light on the importance of self-care with some shelf-care.

It’s Refugee Week and author of Father of the Lost Boys Yuot A. Alaak is celebrating by using the launch for his memoir to raise money for his new charitable foundation. Yuot has established the Ajang Alaak Foundation in his dad’s honour to help promote education, especially among vulnerable girls, both in Australia and in […]

Hello and welcome to June. You may have noticed we’ve got a picture at the bottom of our newsletter that lets you know we’re a not-for-profit publishing house. So what is not-for-profit publishing?

Recorded at Perth Festival’s Literature and Ideas Weekend, this podcast is a live recording of the seminar ‘A Day in the Life of Bestselling Authors and Booksellers’, hosted by Holden Sheppard, with guests Natasha Lester, Michael Earp, Allyce Cameron and Aisling Lawless.

Readings staff members have selected Holden Sheppard’s Invisible Boys for the shortlist of this year’s Readings Young Adult Book Prize. Established in 2016, the prize recognises exciting emerging voices in Australian young adult literature.

Goldfields Girl by Elaine Forrestal is a historical novel for middle readers featuring real-life nineteenth-century teenager Clara Saunders. In this blog post, Elaine takes us into the exciting, dusty, fly-ridden world of a gold rush.

In 2015, I was well and truly sick of my book. The History of Mischief had been lingering with me since 2006, and progress was slow. It was often left for months, only for me to return to it, tinker a bit, and then abandon it for another lengthy period of time. I needed something to […]

For Yuot A. Alaak, stories were a way of distracting himself from the fear of enemy attack, starvation and hardship, and to keep hope alive. In this episode, Yuot discusses his City of Fremantle Hungerford Award shortlisted memoir, Father of the Lost Boys, which tells the story of his family, especially his father, Mecak Ajang […]

What happens when you conference call with four talented Western Australian writers who are equally committed to short fiction as to long? Loads! Hosted by Susan Midalia, this episode of Love to Read Local Radio will give you a wonderful insight into where the urge to write comes from – those turning points in life […]

It has been an amazing two months of Love to Read Local Radio, and today’s episode is no different. We’ve brought together Madelaine Dickie (Red Can Origami), Helen Milroy (Backyard Birds) and Brenton E. McKenna (Ubby’s Underdogs Series) to discuss why they love to tell stories.

I am currently reading A Notable Woman, a lifetime’s worth of ‘the romantic journals’ of Jean Lucey Pratt, edited and condensed into one hefty volume by Simon Garfield. The book was a gift given to me by my friend Andrea in the UK, who read it on a recommendation from her friend, Hilary Mantel. On the other side of […]

This week we signed a contract with Suhrkamp Verlag in Berlin to publish the German-language edition of Doom Creek, Alan Carter’s sequel to Marlborough Man. Local audiences will have to wait till December 2020 for the book, but we guarantee that Alan’s spookily prescient take on doomsday preppers going feral in New Zealand will keep you […]

For anyone who thinks writing a picture book is easier than writing a novel, picture book creator Kelly Canby suggests you first write that novel, then condense it into 500 words without undermining its meaning or leaving out key plot points. Then get your pen and ink out and draw the illustrations as well!