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Gayamaygal/Manly, Sydney, based Australian writer and editor Lauren Crozier has been named winner of the 2023 Text Prize, with her manuscript titled The Best Witch in Paris, which will be published in 2024 as part of the prize. Crozier’s novel is a middle-grade adventure, being stories usually intended for readers aged from about eight to twelve years of age. The Best Witch in Paris sounds like it pitches centre middle of that demographic:

Luna is a spirited young witch raised by her aunts in the witches’ quarters of Paris and Melbourne, after they discovered her as a baby beneath a magic tree. When she is paired with her first familiar — a boobook owl called Silver — Luna is over the moon. But she soon discovers that the deliciously evil Madame Valadon has claimed the owl as hers and will stop at nothing to steal it. Determined to prove her power and solve the mystery of her birth, Luna embarks on a quest of her own — one that will surprise and empower her.

The Text Prize is awarded annually by Melbourne based Australian book publisher Text Publishing for the best manuscript written for young readers.

The Recording Academy of the United States recently amended their rules to stipulate that only human artists and creators can receive Grammy awards. Speaking in a recent interview, Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, said AI musical compositions can be entered for consideration, but at this stage no awards will be presented to such works.

At this point, we are going to allow AI music and content to be submitted, but the GRAMMYs will only be allowed to go to human creators who have contributed creatively in the appropriate categories. If there’s an AI voice singing the song or AI instrumentation, we’ll consider it. But in a songwriting-based category, it has to have been written mostly by a human. Same goes for performance categories – only a human performer can be considered for a GRAMMY.

The 2024 Grammy Awards are scheduled to take place on Wednesday 31 January 2024.

Book cover of Immaculate written by Anna McGahan.

Meanjin/Brisbane based actor and screenwriter Anna McGahan has been named winner of the 2023 The Australian/Vogel’s Award for Young Writers, with her novel Immaculate, which is set to be published on Tuesday 20 June 2023:

All Frances wants is a cure for her daughter, but that would take a miracle, and miracles aren’t something Frances believes in anymore.

Newly divorced from her pastor ex-husband and excommunicated from the church community she once worked within, she wrestles alone with the prognosis of her terminally ill child. Any suggestion of ‘divine intervention’ is salt in the wound of her grief. So when Frances is forced to take in a homeless and pregnant teenage girl who claims to have had an immaculate conception, she’s deeply challenged.

But sixteen-year-old Mary is not who she seems, and soon opens the door to perspectives that profoundly shift Frances’s sense of reality, triggering a chain of astonishing events. It seems that where there is the greatest suffering lies an unexpected magic. Frances begins to hold hope for her family’s future, but the miracle prayed for is not always the one received.

McGahan is the niece of late Australian author Andrew McGahan who died in 2019. I read his 2000 novel, Last Drinks — a crime/thriller set in Queensland ten years after the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police misconduct in the state — a few years ago. I can still smell the copious quantities of alcoholic beverages that featured in the novel to this day…

On the subject of self-publishing, retired Australian horticulturist journalist and foreign aid researcher Helen Moody recently published her own book, South Coast Islands NSW. While Moody’s title is selling well, six-hundred copies from a print run of seven-hundred have sold, Moody was surprised at the difficultly entailed by self-publishing:

However, Moody says if she’d known how difficult it was to self-publish, she would have never started. “I’ve had to be author, administrator, finance officer, event organiser, delivery driver, marketing and promotion officer,” she said.

A fascinating overview of the book publishing industry in Australia, and probably globally, by Dave Gow, who recently went through the process of self-publishing a book:

Traditional book publishers are essentially operating like startup investors or venture capitalists. They make a string of bets on authors and hope that one or two out of ten pays off big. This way, they make enough to cover the losses on others and come out with a reasonable profit.

From what I can gather, Gow enjoyed some success by taking the self-publishing route.

Australian freelance writer and creative copywriter Michelle See-Tho has been named winner of 2023 Penguin Literary Prize, for her manuscript titled Jade and Emerald. See-Tho’s yet to be published novel tells the story of an acquaintance a lonely ten year girl develops with a well-off socialite, and the impact the friendship has on the girl’s relationship with her strict mother.

See-Tho will be awarded a cash prize and a publishing contract with Penguin Random House Australia. Awarded annually since 2017, the Penguin Literary Prize nurtures and supports new Australian writers of literary fiction.

Image courtesy of Firmbee.

With emphasis on the word little. Recent comments made by Sir Paul McCartney, bass player and co-songwriter of defunct 1960s British music act the Beatles, that AI has brought about a “new” song by the band, are perhaps a tad misconstrued. AI technology has indeed assisted in the production of a previously unreleased Beatles song, but application of the technology was somewhat limited.

In 1978 John Lennon, late Beatles guitarist and co-songwriter, recorded a number of demo songs in his New York home, using a portable audio cassette player, variously called a boombox or ghettoblaster. In 1995, when the remaining members of the Beatles were preparing to release the Beatles Anthology, they considered using Lennon’s demo songs as a basis for some new Beatles tracks. This resulted in the inclusion of two songs, Real Love, and Free as a Bird, in the Anthology set.

Starr, Harrison, and McCartney also wanted to include a third track from Lennon’s demo tape, called Now And Then, but there was a problem: the quality of Lennon’s vocals on the recording wasn’t the greatest. Despite their best efforts to tidy up the singing, the group — George Harrison in particular — wasn’t happy with the result. So the idea was shelved.

AI technology however has recently been able to extract Lennon’s vocals from his forty-five year old demo recording, and elevate the quality to a level McCartney and Starr, the surviving band members, are satisfied with. But that was the limit of AI’s part in bringing about this new — and according to McCartney — final Beatles song. The song, and it’s still not certain that it is Now And Then — though Beatles pundits believe it is — is expected to be released later in 2023.

Unless there are other forgotten, or lost, demo tapes made by Beatles members, lying undiscovered somewhere, it is to be hoped whatever track is eventually released, is indeed the last “new” material we hear from the old Liverpool musicians. I say that as I have the concern AI will surely manufacture additional, unauthorised, tracks that mimic the sound and style of the Fab Four, and be passed off as “newly discovered” lost recordings made by the band, by unscrupulous parties.

American author Cormac McCarthy, writer of novels including No Country for Old Men in 2005, The Road in 2006, and more recently in 2022, The Passenger and Stella Maris, died on Tuesday 13 June 2023. According to a statement on his website, he died of natural causes.

So long Cormac McCarthy, and thanks for all the stories.

Design magazine Wallpaper* has published a selection of photos taken during the production of the new Wes Anderson film, Asteroid City. Anderson worked with his long-time collaborator, production designer Adam Stockhausen, to create the trademark “Andersonesque” sets of Asteroid City:

Stockhausen achieved the hyperrealistic quality of Asteroid City through the use of forced perspective: the town becomes desert and bleeds into the horizon, all on a set the size of a football field and its boundaries seemingly imperceptible.

The Literature Map charts the literary connection between writers. The closer writers are in literary style, the more likely a reader will have read the work of other authors in a writer’s “neighbourhood”. For instance, literary neighbours of Irish author Sally Rooney include Margaret Atwood, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Elena Ferrante, and Dolly Alderton. These are all writers whose books I have read.