News - Text Publishing

2009

2009-01-05T00:00:00Z

Happy New Year from Text Publishing. 2009 is going to be big. Stay tuned to this site in the coming months for news of all our exciting new releases.

To whet your appetite, you can download a pdf of our January to June catalogue.

Season's Greetings from Text Publishing

2008-12-22T00:00:00Z

We wish you a merry Christmas, and a happy new year.

The Text offices will be closing this Wednesday, 24 December, and will reopen on Monday, 5 January.

Any orders placed on the website between 24 December and 4 January will be sent out on 5 January.

We look forward to your company in 2009. Stay tuned to this site, there are many extraordinary books coming your way.

Leonard Cohen novels now available

2008-12-10T00:00:00Z

Regular visitors to this site might recall we announced with some excitement last month that Text will be publishing two classic novels by the legendary Leonard Cohen, to coincide with his Australian tour. Well, now we can happily announce that the books are available in all good bookshops.

The Favourite Game, his 1963 debut

and

Beautiful Losers, first written in 1964, now published in Australia for the first time

These two fine novels are a timely reminder of an era less conforming and stifled: a time that fostered Cohen and his contemporaries, like Brautigan, Bukowksi and Burroughs; and enabled him to compose these visionary and rambling explorations in tragedy, humour, irreverence and honesty.

Change We Can Believe In

2008-11-17T00:00:00Z

Text Publishing is delighted to announce that it has signed a third Barack Obama book, Change We Can Believe In.

Available in Australia and New Zealand from 1 December, the book details Obama’s plan for America’s renewal and features eight key speeches from his 2008 presidential campaign.

Among the speeches is Obama’s declaration of candidacy for the Presidency, his inspirational speech on race in response to his former pastor Jeremiah Wright’s controversial comments about America, and his magnanimous declaration as he became President-elect last week. A foreword by Barack Obama describes his vision of hope for America.

Text and Canongate authors on Impac longlist 2009

2008-11-13T00:00:00Z

The longlist for the 2009 International Impac Dublin Literary Award has been released. This is the largest and most international prize of its kind. Libraries from all over the world can nominate books written in any language. A longlist is then put together by various committees. The winner will be announced in March/April next year.

We're very excited to see the following Text and Canongate books on the list:

JM Coetzee / Diary of a Bad Year
Saskia Noort / The Dinner Club
Dan Rhodes / Gold
Ali Smith / Girl Meets Boy
Sally Vickers / Where Three Roads Meet

More details here

Peter Temple shortlisted for Martin Beck Award

2008-11-07T00:00:00Z

Peter Temple has been shortlisted for the Swedish Crime Writers Academy’s 2008 Martin Beck Award, for his multi-award-winning novel The Broken Shore.

One of the most prestigious international crime-writing prizes, the Martin Beck Award is given annually to the best crime novel in translation. The other shortlistees for the 2008 prize are John le Carré, Robert Harris, Deon Meyer and Andrea Maria Schenkel.

The award is named after Martin Beck, a fictional police detective in a Swedish crime novel series written by Sjöwall and Wahlöö. It was initiated in 1971 and has been won by such luminaries as Ruth Rendell, John Le Carré, Len Deighton and Alexander McCall Smith.

The winner will be announced on 30 November.

Barack Obama: Author, Senator, PRESIDENT!

2008-11-05T00:00:00Z

It may not be official, but it is real. As we listen online to McCain conceding, it dawns on us that this epic campaign is finally, almost unbelievably, over. Barack Obama is the new President of the United States.

Before he was President, or even Senator, Barack Obama penned two wonderful books. Both are published by Text. Now is the perfect time to read up on the new leader of the world's most powerful nation.

The Audacity of Hope:
In this bestselling book Obama describes the importance of empathy in politics, his hopes for a different America with different policies, and how the ideals of its democracy can be renewed.

Dreams from My Father:
Before Barack Obama became a politician he was, among other things, a writer. This is his masterpiece: a refreshing, revealing portrait of a young man asking the big questions about identity and belonging.

Text Publishing congratulates Barack Obama on this historic victory.

Hallelujah! Text to publish Leonard Cohen novels

2008-11-05T00:00:00Z

Coinciding with the announcement that Leonard Cohen is to tour Australia in January 2009, Text Publishing is delighted to reveal that it will publish for the first time in Australia two of Cohen’s classic novels, Beautiful Losers and The Favourite Game.

Leonard Cohen needs no introduction. From his roots as a poet he rose to fame as a musician and composer of dark and broken ballads. Cohen is a quintessential figure of the sixties still filling stadiums today, as he will do in January 2009 when he returns to Australia as part of an international tour.

Cohen’s 1963 debut, The Favourite Game, tells the story of Lawrence Breavman, only son of an old Jewish Montreal family. His world is full of death, love, war, women, hyponotism. But when he meets Shell, Breavman finally discovers the demands and sacrifices required by love.

In 1966, Cohen published Beautiful Losers, the tale of a complex love triangle—three people united by their sexual obsession and their fascination with Catherine Tekakwitha, a mythic seventeenth-century Mohawk saint. Ripe with biblical rhetoric, Beautiful Losers is a hymn to loss, sex and obsession.

As Australia enters its most conservative period in decades, the publication of Cohen’s works is a timely reminder of an era less conforming and stifled: a time that fostered Cohen and his contemporaries, like Brautigan, Bukowksi and Burroughs; and enabled him to compose these visionary and rambling explorations in tragedy, humour, irreverence and honesty.

Text will publish both novels in January, to coincide with Cohen’s tour of each Australian capital city between 24 January and 7 February 2009. In August 2009 Text will also publish Nick Cave’s first novel in twenty years, The Death of Bunny Munro.

Coetzee longlisted for Australia's richest literary prize

2008-10-28T00:00:00Z

The longlist for the Australia-Asia Literary Award was announced on 17 October by Western Australia Culture and Arts Minister John Day. This new prize, inaugurated last year by former WA Premier Alan Carpenter, is the richest literary award in Australia and Asia valued at AUD $110,000. On the longlist of twelve books is Diary of a Bad Year, by J.M. Coetzee. First published by Text last year, this ground-breaking work of fiction has also been shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Awards and the SA Festival Awards for Literature. It is now available in a new paperback edition.

The winner of the Australia-Asia Award and the Western Australian Premier's Book Award will be announced at an awards ceremony in Perth on 21 November.

Frankfurt International Book Fair

2008-10-15T00:00:00Z

The 60th annual Frankfurter Buchmesse is on! This giant of trade fairs draws publishers and media organisations from around the world each year to buy and sell the latest hot intellectual property. As always, publisher Michael Heyward is in attendance, with rights manager Anne Beilby. Together they will be showcasing Text's wonderful list to publishers, scouts and agents from all corners of the globe.

If you are an attending publisher or agent, and would like to see the Text Publishing 2008 Rights Sheet, then you can download the pdf here. Text Publishing will be at stand number H901 in Hall 8.0, which we're sharing with our good friends at Canongate Books.

Have a happy Buchmesse everyone—take your vitamins, and get some sleep!

New Nick Cave novel in 2009

2008-10-08T00:00:00Z

Here at Text we are all very excited to have secured the ANZ rights to a new novel by music legend and revered story-teller Nick Cave. The Death of Bunny Munro is his first novel since And the Ass Saw the Angel was published to great acclaim in 1989. We will publish in late 2009.

'The Death of Bunny Munro delivers exactly what you want and expect from the enigmatic and phenomenally talented Nick Cave—a dark and compelling portrait of characters who dwell on the fringes of society and stumble through life on a diet of drugs, chaos and disappointment, but who'll never give up stumbling which is in part why they fascinate us so much. It's a funny yet tragic novel, proof all over again that Nick Cave is a writer out of the box. We cannot wait to publish this remarkable novel in Nick's native Australia where he is a revered icon.'
Michael Heyward, Publisher

Thrice cursed - more books from YA Prize-winner Richard Newsome

2008-10-08T00:00:00Z

Last month we reported that the winner of our inaugural Young Adult Prize for 2008 was The Billionaire's Curse by Richard Newsome. We are so in love with this manuscript and this author that we've signed two follow-up books, to come at the end of 2009 and the end of 2010.

Galloway on Giller Prize longlist

2008-09-25T00:00:00Z

Canadian author Steven Galloway has made the longlist of the prestigious Giller Prize, for his highly acclaimed novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo. You can see the longlist here. The shortlist (of five) will be announced on 7 Oct, the winner on 11 Nov.

Congratulations, Steven.

Kate Grenville on The 7.30 Report

2008-09-24T00:00:00Z

Kate was interviewed by Kerry O'Brien on Monday night, on ABC-TV's leading current affairs program, 'The 7.30 Report'. The prize-winning author chatted with Kerry about a range of issues, but mostly about her new novel The Lieutenant. You can watch the interview here.

Queensland Premier joins Helen Garner fan club

2008-09-16T00:00:00Z

Helen Garner will have to clear a space in her trophy cabinet to accommodate the Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Fiction. Garner claimed the $25,000 prize, for her novel The Spare Room, at an awards ceremony in Brisbane tonight. Earlier this month, The Spare Room took out the Victorian equivalent, the Vance Palmer Prize.

Text congratulates Helen on another award - further confirmation, if any was needed, that this is a very special book indeed, from one of Australia's most gifted writers.

Perhaps Peter Carey said it best when we sent him a copy of The Spare Room to read:
'Helen Garner is a great writer;
The Spare Room is a great book.’

Bernard Beckett's Genesis on The Inkys shortlist

2008-09-15T00:00:00Z

The shortlists for this year's Inky Awards have been announced by the Centre for Youth Literature. The Inkys are Australia's only teenage choice book award.

Each year, the Centre for Youth Literature selects a longlist of ten Australian books and ten international books from the last year. Then a young panel picks a shortlist of three Australian and three international books.

Readers under the age of 20 can then vote for their favourites. The International winner gets the Silver Inky, and the Australian winner gets the Golden Inky and $2000.

Voting is now open at www.insideadog.com.au, until 27 October, and the winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in Melbourne on 6 November.

The shortlists:

Silver Inky:
Genesis, Bernard Beckett
Boy Toy, Barry Lyga
Before I Die, Jenny Downham

Gold Inky:
Town, James Roy
Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shaun Tan
A Brief History of Montmaray, Michelle Cooper

Lloyd Jones honoured by NZ PM

2008-09-11T00:00:00Z

Lloyd Jones, the award-winning author of Mister Pip, received the 2008 Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement at a ceremony in Wellington on Tuesday night. Along with Elizabeth Smithers, for her poetry, and Bill Oliver for his non-fiction writing, Jones receives $60,000 in recognition of the enduring contribution his fiction has made to New Zealand literature.

Lloyd's novels have won a number of NZ literary prizes, and in 2007 Mister Pip won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Text is very proud to publish four of Lloyd's novels and we congratulate him on this latest honour.

The wait is over - The Gargoyle is here!

2008-09-09T00:00:00Z

The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson

A New York Times bestseller,
it debuted at no. 1 in Canada,
and now it's available in Australia and New Zealand, from Text.

Get your copy now. It will blow you away.

Watch The Gargoyle trailer

The Spare Room wins the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction

2008-09-02T00:00:00Z

The winners of the 2008 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were announced at a function at Federation Square in Melbourne last night. From a shortlist of three in the fiction category, Helen Garner emerged the winner of the $30,000 prize.

In 2006, Garner won the Melbourne Prize for Literature—at the time Australia's most valuable literary award—in recognition of her outstanding contribution to Australian literature and to cultural and intellectual life. Helen has previously won South Australian and NSW Premier's Awards, A Walkley Award, a Ned Kelly and the Nita B. Kibble Literary Award, but as a native Victorian, Helen is very pleased to add a Vance Palmer to her trophy cabinet.

Text congratulates Helen on this wonderful achievement, and on The Spare Room, a truly remarkable novel.

'A perfect novel'. Peter Carey

'Swift, beautiful, and relentless.' Alice Sebold

'By the last page you feel not just that you have read a magnificent novel but that you have experienced life itself.’ The Times

‘A piece of fiction at once artful, gripping and fiercely beautiful.' Observer

Text Publishing Young Adult prize - winner announced

2008-09-01T00:00:00Z

Father of three Richard Newsome has taken out the inaugural Text Publishing Young Adult Writing Prize for his debut novel, The Billionaire's Curse.

The prize, $10,000 and a publishing contract, was awarded on Saturday night as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival. The competition had attracted 300 entries from Australia and New Zealand.

Michael Heyward, Publisher at Text, described The Billionaire's Curse as a ‘brilliantly original whodunnit which is stylish, funny and very entertaining—and is going to appeal to a really broad spectrum of readers.’

In the novel, a teenager called Gerald finds his life turned upside down when his great aunt dies. She has made him sole beneficiary of her estate—worth 20 billion pounds! But Gerald soon learns that his great aunt was murdered, that he’s next on the killer’s list, and that a 2000-year-old mystery ties it all together.

Newsome, a 43-year-old from Brisbane, took the plunge and wrote his first novel while being a stay-at-home Dad to his three children. He began making up The Billionaire's Curse ten years ago as a bedtime story for his children, but it was only when the family left the rat race of Sydney for Queensland that Newsome found the time to write the story down.

Newsome described himself as ‘in equal parts honoured, humbled and hung-over’. He credited the postal service for his win.

‘Like many first-time writers, I had serious doubts that anyone would want to read my efforts. I only sent the manuscript to Text Publishing two days before the close of entries, convinced it would end up as recycled landfill or propping up a wonky desk leg in the corner of the office. So thank you, Australia Post, for a job well done.’

Text will publish The Billionaire's Curse in July next year.

Entries for the next Text Publishing Young Adult Writing Prize will open in May 2009 and the winner will be announced at the next Melbourne Writers Festival.