Skip to content

Friday High Five: Flanagan and the Booker, World’s Coolest Bookstores

Read Thursday, 24 Jul 2014

Richard Flangan makes Man Booker longlist

The Man Booker longlist 2014 has been announced – the first since American writers were included in the prize. And unsurprisingly, there’s a strong US contingent, and less Commonwealth writers represented than usual. Richard Flanagan is the only Australian, long listed for Narrow Road to the Deep North. You can read the full longlist here.

Narrow Road to the Deep North was shortlisted for this year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards; you can read Sam Cooney’s review on our website.

None

Kibble and Dobbie go to Kris Olsson and Kate Richards

In local awards news, two prestigious, long-running prizes for Australian women writers have just been awarded. The Nita B. Kibble Award for Life Writing has gone to Kris Olsson for Boy Lost (shortlisted for this year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Award). You can read a review by Emily Laidlaw on our site, or read an interview with Olsson about the book. The Dobbie award for a first-time book by a female writer went to Kate Richards, for Madness: A Memoir.

None

World’s Coolest Bookstores

Feel like browsing some of the best bookstores in the world? Well, you can … vicariously, at least. CNN has compiled a list of the world’s coolest bookstores, with drool-worthy images – from the stunning El Ateneo Bookstore in Buenos Aires (pictured), housed in an old theatre, to the name-recognition cool of Paris’s famous Shakespeare and Co.

None

‘Selling a book won’t change your life’: Tips from a debut author

Debut author Ted Thompson offers six things he’s learned from publishing his first book, from the fact that subject matter (what your book’s about) matters more than we’re told it does, to the advice ‘don’t respond to critics’ … and that the fact that publishing his book didn’t his life, at least not in the ways he dreamed it would.

Werewolves around the world, and their origins

What is the deal, as Jerry Seinfeld would say, with werewolves? Why do cultures around the world have their own stories of men and women turning into beasts, often after being engulfed by a murderous rage? In East Africa, men transform into lions. The Arawak people of South America turn into leopards. There is a theory about how these stories came about – and it’s all about interspecies cross-dressing.

Stay up to date with our upcoming events and special announcements by subscribing to The Wheeler Centre's mailing list.

Privacy Policy

The Wheeler Centre acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Centre stands. We acknowledge and pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their Elders, past and present, as the custodians of the world’s oldest continuous living culture.