Prizes

The winner of Australia's richest literary prize did not attend the ceremony.

His absence was not by choice.

Behrouz Boochani, whose debut book won both the $25,000 non-fiction prize at the Victorian premier's literary awards and the $100,000 Victorian prize for literature on Thursday night, is not allowed into Australia.

Poet Hannah Sullivan has won the prestigious and lucrative TS Eliot prize for her first collection Three Poems - just the third debut to land the award in its 25-year history, and a sign that the poetry world is hunting for a new generation of voices.  Read more

When public discourse denigrates expertise, when politicians and Twitter trolls alike have learned to dismiss every criticism or uncomfortable truth as "fake" and media outlets compete for clickbait headlines, it's not surprising to find a corresponding hunger for a deeper, more thoughtful form of engagement with ideas and for that - thankfully - there's still no better medium than a book.

An academic treatise on dung, a how-to guide of acupuncture for horses and the first-ever German language entry are among the six books in the running for the 40th edition of The Bookseller's Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year.  Read more

Rows, gaffes and disdainful speeches - the Booker prize has always been in the news. But now, a creeping sense of bad decision-making is undermining its cachet.