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JACINTA DI MASE MANAGEMENT
Newsletter February 2024 |
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Illustration by Jess Racklyeft for CBCA 2024 theme, 'Reading is Magic' |
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JACINTA
The Italian Marriage by Jenna Lo Bianco
Apiergon by Colum McCann (on audio)
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DANIELLE
Into the Mouth of the Wolf by Erin Gough
Enter Ghost By Isabelle Hammad |
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JdM creators longlisted in DANZ Children’s Book Award 2024
We are thrilled and delighted to discover that two JdM creators have been longlisted in the DANZ (Diversity in Australia and New Zealand) Children’s Book Awards, 2024.
Picture Book category:
Be Careful, Xiao Xin! Written by Alice Pung and illustrated by Sher Rill Ng, Published by Working Title Press
Middle Grade category:
Zadie Ma and the Dog Who Chased the Moon By Gabrielle Wang, Published by Penguin Books Australia
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Michelle Scott Tucker: an acquisition, and visiting scholarship!
Michelle Scott Tucker will be the 2024 Visiting Scholar at the State Library of NSW, to work on a biography of Louisa Lawson, newspaper proprietor, poet, suffragist and mother of Henry Lawson. The library’s Visiting Scholar program is a competitive and prestigious initiative supporting and fostering writing, research and study.
And, based on the success of her debut biography,
Elizabeth Macarthur: A Life at the Edge of the World, Jane Pearson at Text Publishing has acquired Michelle's Louisa Lawson biography for publication in 2025.
Read more here
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JdM creators shortlisted in Indie Book Awards 2024
Two JDM creators are shortlisted in the Indie Book Awards 2024! The list is chosen by Australian independent booksellers – who nominate their favourite Australian books of 2023.
Debut Fiction Shortlist
The Visitors by Jane Harrison (Fourth Estate Australia)
Children's Shortlist
Neil, the Amazing Sea Cucumber by Amelia McInerney, illustrated by Lucinda Gifford (Affirm Press)
Two further JDM title's - Sher Rill Ng'
Millie Mak the Maker and Karen Comer'
Grace Notes were also recognised in the long list - congratulations all!
The Category Winners and the Overall Book of the Year Winner will be announced at a virtual awards event on Monday 25 March 2024.
Read more here
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UWAP acquires Polimeni junior fiction series
UWAP has acquired ANZ rights to a four-book junior fiction series,
Ella and the Frogs, from Cassy Polimeni.
The forthcoming series is for early readers aged five to eight years, ‘exploring themes of friendship and animal protection/conservation’, with each story opening with ‘a frog-related fact that mirrors a theme in Ella’s life’.
UWAP plans to publish
Ella and the Amazing Frog Orchestra in July 2024, with subsequent books in the series due to be published between 2024 and 2026.
Read more here
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Marion Taffe named 'Student of the Year' by RMIT University!
HUGE congrats to Marion Taffe who has been crowned, Student of the Year for the College of Vocational Education’s Creative Industries at RMIT.
Looking for a change after a 20-year career as a journalist, Marion's debut historical fiction will be published by Catherine Milne at HarperCollins in 2025.
Read more about what Taffe had to say here
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Jane Harrison wins the 2023 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award
Winner in the 'Individual Award' Category of the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award, the judges "recognise past achievements and gives consideration to the potential of an individual to continue their contribution to Australian society through the performing arts."
Jane’s work,
The Visitors, has been released and performed in 2023 as a play, an opera, and as a novel. It is set in January 1788 and concerns seven Aboriginal men and women gathering at Warrane to decide on whether to welcome the ‘visitors’ who are set to arrive on their land.
More than a decade of exacting, painstaking research went into
The Visitors – a feat typical of Jane’s creativity and determination to change the narrative of first contact ,and the misconceptions about First Nations' men.
Read the judges comments here
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Lora Inak joins JdM!
Born during a period of civil unrest in Turkiye, Lora Inak and her family immigrated to Australia to find a safer place to call home. Growing up an immigrant in the 1980/90s wasn’t always easy, and so Lora found solace in stories – first in reading them and then eventually in writing her own.
Lora’s first Young Adult fiction title
Unspoken Rules was published in 2017, and her short-story memoir
One of A Kind, featured in the PanMacmillan collection
Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity edited by Randa Abdel-Fattah and Sara Saleh, in 2019. Both stories have strong themes of culture, cultural conflict, family, love, and loss – themes close to Lora’s heart.
Welcome Lora! Read more here
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RECENT & FORTHCOMING TITLES 2024 |
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The Easter Bunny's Grandest Egg Hunt
Jess Racklyeft
Affirm Press
Jess Racklyeft’s trademark whimsical illustration and delightful rhyme culminates in this heartwarming story of friendship, teamwork and a little bit of chocolate!
Preorder
here
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All the World Says Goodnight
Jess Racklyeft
Affirm Press
Across the world each night, beds are made for sleeping. A koala rests on a branch, and otters hold hands as they float downstream ...Say goodnight to all of these animals and more in this bedtime lullaby from Jess Racklyeft now in board book format!
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Tree
Jess Racklyeft
Allen & Unwin
A journey of wonder and discovery from multi-award-winning picture book creators Claire Saxby and Jess Racklyeft, exploring the life in and around a mighty mountain ash, including a stunning fold-out page showing the full length of the tree.
Preorder here
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Footprint
Phil Cummings & Sally Soweol Han
Affirm Press
A unique, lyrical picture book that empowers children to think about the natural environment in a mindful and positive way, from one of Australia's most prolific writers, with stunningly beautiful illustrations from an exciting up-and-coming illustrator.
Preorder
here
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The Hidden Hat
Phil Cummings & Jennifer Goldsmith
Scholastic Australia
While playing hide-and-seek at Grandpa’s house, Lucy and Mitch find a hat, hidden away in a deep, dark corner.
It’s Grandpa’s hat, filled with memories...
In this moving story of rediscovery, truth and mateship, a hidden hat stirs memories of a grandfather’s days serving in Vietnam.
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Seven Wherewithal Way: Over the Mountains and Through the Desert
Samantha Ellen Bound
Affirm Press
Return to the Realms of Seven Wherewithal Way in this magical and action-packed third instalment in Samantha-Ellen Bound's epic portal fantasy series.
Preorder here
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Kate Luckins
Affirm Press
Drop the eco-guilt and create the sustainable lifestyle you want!
Sustainability leader Dr Kate Luckins knows how striving for eco-perfection sets us up for failure. She encourages everyone to act on climate change by living their own shade of green instead.
"Kate makes it feel entirely possible to live in a more conscientious way in our busy world".
ALICE ZASLAVSKY.
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Cool Water
Myfanwy Jones
Hachette Australia
From the Miles Franklin-shortlisted author of
Leap comes an unforgettable new novel about fathers and sons, and the damage that can ripple through generations.
'Why this novel? Because we need empathy, understanding, some magic and hope more than ever in our lifetimes.' HOLLY RINGLAND
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RECENT INTERNATIONAL DEALS |
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Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Detective Kelly Gardiner & Sharmini Kumar.
Sold in a global deal brokered by Roberta Ivers at HarperCollins Australia to Satyal Rakesh at HarperVia in the US, and Cat Camacho at HQ UK
The global publication date is early April 2025, in time to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth.
Congratulations Kelly and Sharmini! |
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Unbury the Dead
Fiona Hardy, Affirm Press
Fiona Hardy's debut crime fiction has been acquired by Affirm Press for publication in 2025.
As small-time criminals and sometime detectives Teddy Golding and Art Roubicek search the suburbs of Melbourne for a missing teenager named Cole, their colleague Alice Chan has a different job: driving the dead body of one of Australia’s richest men along Victoria’s east coast to his final resting place before anybody finds out he’s dead. When a surprise revelation sees their cases collide, it’s up to Teddy and Alice to find out what happened – and test the limits of their already flexible moral boundaries.
Unbury the Dead has the semi-legal private detection skills of Emma Viskic’s Caleb Zelic series, the irreverent comic criminality of Elmore Leonard, flawed twenty-something protagonists like Steig Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander, the surprise turnabouts of a Christian White thriller, and the close-to-cosy danger levels of
The Thursday Murder Club.
'The book is funny, atmospheric, intriguing, memorable and very clever. Fiona has done a terrific job ... a very fresh take on the Aussie thriller.' - Martin Hughes
Ella and the Frogs
Cassy Polimeni, UWA Publishing
The forthcoming series is for early readers aged five to eight years, ‘exploring themes of friendship and animal protection/conservation’, with each story opening with ‘a frog-related fact that mirrors a theme in Ella’s life’.
Ella and the Amazing Frog Orchestra, the first book in the series, introduces Ella, who ‘has moved house and is missing her old life, until she discovers a frog pond in the backyard and bonds with her new classmate, Mai, over the school frog bog’. Faced with a development project that threatens the pond, the new friends have to work together ‘to save the frogs before it’s too late’.
UWAP plans to publish the first book,
Ella and the Amazing Frog Orchestra in July 2024, with subsequent books in the series due to be published between 2024 and 2026.
Read more here
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Illustration by Briony Stewart, from
These Little Feet with Allen & Unwin |
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