Aussie director Nicholas Verso and producer Tania Chambers optioned the film and television rights to Holden Sheppard’s YA novel Invisible Boys this week. Invisible Boyshas already won the 2018 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award, the 2019 Kathleen Mitchell Award and the 2019 Western Australian Premier’s Award for an Emerging Writer, and was shortlisted for a 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Readings Prize.
Welcome to May. How is our bookish tribe faring this month? Have you broken the Goodreads algorithm by smashing out your 2020 Reading Challenge in the first quarter? Here at Fremantle Press, right at the moment when the physical world seemed to contract to what was experienced from the lounge room or the home office, our local WA stories expanded into new territories and formats.
During her Perth Festival Writers Week session with ABC RN’s Claire Nichols, Afternoons with Harvey Beam author Carrie Cox described what it was like to grow up on the wrong side of the river – by which she meant the side without a library.
While gearing up for the hot and sweaty whirlwind that typifies Perth Festival Writers Week (and February in general!) I’ve been reflecting on the benefits of networking.
DAVE WARNER IS A STAR. I know you all knew that but I just wanted to underline it in bold caps. Not only is his book Clear to the Horizon on the longlist for the International Dublin Literary Award but he’s also just written a swell new crime novel set in the early sixties when surf music ruled the waves. River of Salt will be out in April 2019. We’ve just sold the audio rights to Wavesound and Dave will be touring far and wide from Woy Woy to Western Australia. We highly recommend him as a speaker, performer and guest panellist so get hold of our marketing team to secure him for your events.
If you were an author and you found a hole in the front cover of your book – you’d be alarmed rather than excited right? That’s not the case with the wonderful Kelly Canby, who was delighted to find a die cut hole smack bang in the middle of the Korean language edition of her latest book.
Hello from NYC, where I am one of eight delegates attending the Australia Council’s New York Publishers Program. Before you get jealous, I’m also bussing back and forth between the New York Rights Fair and New York BookExpo with a big bunch of Fremantle Press books. Needless to say, I’ve got my running shoes on!
Welcome to May! As I write this I am finishing up my time at the Australia Council’s Visiting International Publishers program where I’ve been talking to publishers, scouts and agents. This year’s program included representatives from Germany, India, Spain, France, the US, Denmark, the Netherlands, the UK and Canada. It’s way too early to talk about any results from the program as yet but I do have a couple of other exciting rights announcements to make instead.
