Love & Pain, Ben Gillies, Chris Joannou tell their Silverchair story

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Love & Pain, Ben Gillies, Chris Joannou tell their Silverchair story

4 July 2023

Love & Pain, by Silverchair's Ben Gillies, Chris Joannou, book cover

Book cover of Love & Pain, written by Ben Gillies and Chris Joannou.

Wednesday 27 September 2023 will be a red letter day for fans of erstwhile Australian indie rock act Silverchair. That’s the day Love & Pain, a book co-written by Ben Gillies, the band’s drummer, and bass player Chris Joannou, is set to be published by Hachette Australia. That Gillies and Joannou are behind this book is what makes it so compelling, as, to date, not a lot has been heard from former members about their time in the band.

So much has been written about Silverchair over the years but very little has been said by the band’s members. In Love & Pain, childhood friends Ben Gillies (drummer) and Chris Joannou (bass player) tell us tales about growing up across the road from each other and starting in Silverchair, wild stories from the peak of their days in the spotlight, and the ups and downs of how their lives have panned out since.

Entries open for 2023 Australian Prime Minister Literary Awards

27 June 2023

The awards span six categories fiction, non-fiction, young adult literature, children’s literature, poetry, and Australian history, with prizes of up to one hundred thousand dollars awarded per category. Entries are open to citizens or permanent residents of Australia, for titles published or released in 2022, and close on the afternoon of Tuesday 25 July 2023.

Winners will be announced later in the year. Read more here.

The 2023 Miles Franklin Australian literary award shortlist

20 June 2023

Book cover of The Lovers, by Yumna Kassab, named on the 2023 Miles Franklin shortlist.

The shortlist of the 2023 Miles Franklin literary award was announced this morning. The following six books have advanced to the next stage of the prestigious Australian literary award:

Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
Hopeless Kingdom by Kgshak Akec
Iris by Fiona Kelly McGregor
Limberlost by Robbie Arnott
The Lovers by Yumna Kassab

More good news for Jessica Au and Robbie Arnott who continue to not only win literary awards, but be nominated for them. And good to see some not so often seen writers make the shortlist. In a statement, the judges said the shortlisted titles all represent fresh and bold fiction writing:

The 2023 Miles shortlist celebrates six works that delve deeply into archives and memory, play confidently with style and structure and strike new grounds in language and form. From deeply immersive tales to polished jewels of craft, from lyrical mappings of land to convention-breaking chronicles, this is novel-writing at its freshest and boldest.

The winner will be named on Tuesday 25 July 2023.

Limberlost by Robbie Arnott wins 2023 BookPeople fiction award

19 June 2023

The winners of the 2023 BookPeople Awards were announced last night, Sunday 18 June, at a ceremony at the Adelaide Convention Centre, in South Australia.

The awards recognise both the efforts of booksellers across Australia, and Australian writers of adult fiction, adult non-fiction, and children’s books. Winners are selected every year by members of the Australian Booksellers Association.

Craig Silvey won Children’s Book of the Year with Runt, Niki Savva won Non-Fiction Book of the Year with Bulldozed, while Robbie Arnott continued on his winning way, taking out the Fiction Book of the Year, with his 2022 novel Limberlost.

I’m yet to read Limberlost, but rest assured, it’s there TBR.

Lauren Crozier wins unpublished manuscript 2023 Text Prize

19 June 2023

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.

Immaculate by Anna McGahan wins 2023 The Australian/Vogel’s Award

16 June 2023

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…

Michelle See-Tho wins 2023 Penguin Literary Prize

15 June 2023

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.

The Next Chapter, publishing unpublished Australian stories

7 June 2023

Every year the Next Chapter helps four emerging, unpublished, Australian writers bring their stories to a wider audience, through financial support and mentoring. Writers chosen to participate receive fifteen thousand dollars, and are given assistance to get their work published.

Past Next Chapter writers include Evelyn Araluen, winner of the 2022 Stella Prize with her collection of poetry, Dropbear, and Adam Thompson, who wrote short story collection Born Into This in 2021.

The initiative is organised by the Wheeler Centre, and aided by funding from the Australia Council for the Arts. Applications for the Next Chapter 2024 close on Friday 30 June 2023.

RELATED CONTENT

Australian literature, awards, writing

The 2023 Australian Book Design Awards (ABDA) winners

31 May 2023

Book cover of Son of Sin by Omar Sakr, designed by Amy Daoud

Book cover of Son of Sin, written by Omar Sakr, designed by Amy Daoud.

The Australian Book Design Awards (ABDA) not only judge books by their covers, they celebrate them, and last week the winners of the 2023 awards were announced. Son of Sin written by Omar Sakr, pictured above, won the Best Designed Literary Fiction/Poetry Cover award, with a cover created by Sydney based book designer Amy Daoud.

In other categories, Zeno Sworder, who both wrote, and designed the cover for My Strange Shrinking Parents, won the ABDA Cover of the Year prize, while ABDA’s Book of the Year award went to QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection, with a cover by Dirk Hiscock and Karina Soraya, who both work at the National Gallery of Victoria.

All of the winning covers can be seen on ABDA’s Instagram page.

The rise of experimental, strange Australian literature and fiction

29 May 2023

There’s a lot to like about smaller, independent, book publishers. The first has to be the quality of the stories they’ve been bringing to bookshelves in recent years. This is borne out by the increasing presence of indie published titles in the long and short lists of Australian literary awards such as the Stella, and the Miles Franklin.

The second is the “risk” smaller publishers — many of whom are members of the Small Network Press — will take on a book with a storyline that might be regarded as fringe, something perhaps their mainstream counterparts are reluctant to do.

Nina Culley, writing for Kill Your Darlings, says the publication of titles including Grimmish by Michael Winkler, Every Version of You by Grace Chan, and Dropbear, a collection of poetry by Evelyn Araluen, is signalling a move away from “realist” stories, towards writing more on the experimental and strange side.

Small presses, literary magazines, anthologies and poetry collections have long since encouraged outlandish stories, experimentation and play, and we are now seeing more smaller publishing houses doing the same. Publishers like Spineless Wonders, SubbedIn, UQP, Transit Lounge and Giramondo are revolutionising Australia’s literary output by responding to an expanding readership that craves literary disobedience.

I’m intrigued by what is regarded as “literary disobedience” though (much as I like the term). For instance I finished reading Every Version of You last week, and despite the novel being described as a work of speculative literary fiction, the entire premise really seemed all too plausible. But maybe I need to stop consuming as much science fiction and fantasy as I do.

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