Two first-time novelists - Jon Bauer and Kirsten Tranter - are among the eight writers long-listed for this year’s Miles Franklin prize. Kim Scott’s nomination follows on from his regional Commonwealth Prize win and Chris Womersley’s Bereft comes on top of his Indie Awards win earlier this week. The prize is one of the country’s most venerable and prestigious literary awards.

The long list…

The Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu announced changes to the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards this morning at the Wheeler Centre. In 2011, five awards, each with a purse of $25,000, will be awarded in the following categories: fiction (the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction); non-fiction (the Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction); poetry (the CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry); drama (the Louis Esson Prize for Drama)…

Publishing group The Thousands is running an online program “that recognises and rewards local achievements”. Nominees for the Thousands Awards have been published, and though the nominees for the ‘Read’ category are all worthy of the $1000 prize, readers can vote for their favourite. The nominees are literary journal The Lifted Brow, independent publishers Small House Books and Rainoff Books, spoken word event…

Have you read Rohan Wilson’s bloodthirsty account of the ‘black wars’ in Tasmania, The Roving Party? Do you agree with Cordelia Fine’s take on the science of the sexes in Delusions of Gender? Are you still dreaming of Ireland after reading Libby Hart’s This Floating World? This year, as part of the Premier’s 21 campaign being held in conjunction with the…