Booktopia’s Editorial Director Caroline Baum has just been announced as the winner of the 2015 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship at the Adelaide Writers Festival tonight, the announcement followed the Hazel Rowley Memorial Lecture, given by David Marr. “Caroline Baum’s proposed biography of Lucie Dreyfus is ambitious in scope, international in reach and blazingly original,” said Jani... Read more

As further evidence of Stephen King of being not just one of the world’s greatest storytellers but also one of the hardest working, the acclaimed author has just published a new short story for The New Yorker. Here’s the first part, click the link below to read it in it’s entirety… A Death by Stephen King Jim Trusdale had a shack on the west side of his father’s gone-to-... Read more

Just when you thought Veronica Roth fans couldn’t get more excited with the release of the film adaptation of Insurgent, the second novel of the bestselling Divergent trilogy, around the corner, an announcement from the author has given them even more reason to celebrate. Roth has inked a deal for a new two book series, the first of which is due to arrive in 2017. According to HarperColli... Read more

In 1983 Freddy Heineken, CEO of the brewing company Heineken International and one of the richest people in the Netherlands, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of friends, demanding 16 million Euros for his release. The rest is history. In 1987, journalist Peter R. de Vries release the acclaimed book De ontvoering van Alfred Heineken which was an instant bestseller. The book was never translated i... Read more

The University of Queensland Press has refused to publish the memoir of former Queensland Premier Campbell Newman, due to Mr Newman’s decision as Premier to axe the Premier’s Literary Awards. Earlier this week Newman said his memoir, co-written by former Cairns MP Gavin King and with a working title of Can Do, would be a “warts and all” story of the man who left his job as Brisbane&... Read more

Naomi Simson built one of Australia’s biggest online success stories, RedBalloon, from just an idea. She is also known for her inspirational blogs on happiness at work and home that reach more than three-quarters of a million followers on LinkedIn and her role on Channel 10’s Shark Tank. She chats to John Purcell about her new book Live What You Love. Grab your copy of Naomi Simson&... Read more

Historian Walter Elliot has unearthed the first unseen Sherlock Holmes story in more than 80 years that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to help save a town bridge. The 1,300-word tale starring the famous detective was found in a collection of short stories written for a local bazaar. The story is entitled Sherlock Holmes: Discovering the Border Burghs and, by deduction, the Brig Bazaar. It is beli... Read more

THE 5 STAGES OF WRITING: 1. This is genius. 2. This isn’t working. 3. This is useless. 4. Really useless. 5. But this toast is nice. — Matt Haig (@matthaig1) February 20, 2015 WRITING TIPS: 1) Stare out of window. 2) Feel a bit hungover. 3) Wonder if you had enough love as a child. 4) Eat toast. 5) Go on Twitter. — Matt Haig (@matthaig1) February 20, 2015 Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Hai... Read more

In case you haven’t been following, we’re kind of obsessed with Stephen King’s twitter feed. It’s a treasure trove of crazy genius. You can find tweets in the third person where he refers to himself as ‘Honey Badger’. Honey Badger don’t give a shit about Valentine’s Day. But I like it. — Stephen King (@StephenKing) February 14, 2015 And some magni... Read more

But we have to pick ONE pet And pick it out soon. You know mother told us To get back by noon! Know the phrasing but can’t pick where it’s from? That’s because it’s a passage from a Dr Seuss story, a story that nobody knew existed until now! More than 20 years after his death in 1991, a box filled with text and sketches will come to life in the latest creation by Theodor... Read more