Helen Garner, Melissa Lucashenko and Zadie Smith are among the more than 40 writers to have withdrawn from Adelaide Writers Week in the last 24 hours.

Some 90 participants, including key national and international guests such as Helen Garner, Toni Jordan, Trent Dalton, Melissa Lucashenko and Zadie Smith, have withdrawn in protest from Adelaide Writers Week, a core program of the 2026 Adelaide Festival, after the Festival Board’s decision yesterday [8 January] to remove award-winning Palestinian-Australian author and academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from the Writers Week program.

Adelaide Writers Week in disarray as almost 100 writers boycott over Board’s ‘censorship’ of Randa Abdel-Fattah, artshub.com.au

Sophie Kinsella, author of the bestselling Shopaholic series of novels, has been remembered as a “wonderful, warm woman” following her death at the age of 55.

Author Sophie Kinsella remembered as a ‘wonderful, warm woman’, BBC News

I saw this from November 2024.

Subtitle: A conversation with the author of ‘White City’

I don’t even remember how I came across Vine Street, British author Dominic Nolan’s third crime novel, because it is published in the UK and not readily available in the U.S., but by the time I finished the first chapter, I was hooked. This was a major talent with an original voice. The story, which jumps between the 1930s, the 1960s, and the early Aughts–spending most of the time in the ‘30s in London’s seedy Soho neighborhood between the wars—follows Leon Geats, a vice cop who likes the criminals he’s supposed to police far more than he does most of the coppers he works with.

Despite the gruesome murders—based on the real-life murders of foreign sex workers during the period—Geats’ passion wears off on the reader and you find yourself wanting to inhabit this shady world and the big and burly and broken hearts that love it. And without giving anything away, I’ll say that the twist at the end is perhaps the best sleight of hand I’ve read in any book. Just masterful plotting.

So when I saw that Nolan had a new historically-based crime novel coming out in England in November, I couldn’t wait to read it and I got in touch with Nolan to arrange for a copy. It was again peopled with deeply conflicted, powerfully drawn, tough and tragic characters racing around real historical events and bumping into real people. Think of a British James Ellroy without the ego or the noxious right-wing delight in racist epithets.

Dominic Nolan on Historical Crime Fiction, London, and Cycles of Violence

A New Jersey man who stabbed and partially blinded novelist Sir Salman Rushdie on a New York lecture stage was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Friday.

Hadi Matar, 27, was convicted of attempted murder and assault earlier this year.

Sir Salman was on stage speaking before an audience in August 2022, when he was stabbed multiple times in the face and neck. The attack left him blind in one eye, with damage to his liver and a paralysed hand caused by nerve damage to his arm.

The attack came 35 years after Sir Salman’s controversial novel The Satanic Verses, which had long made him the target of death threats for its portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.

Ana Faguy, BBC, Rushdie attacker sentenced to 25 years in prison

World Book Day is on the 6th of March.

World Book Day will mark 30 years of literary fun in 2025.

Unesco, which promotes global education, culture and heritage, created the annual event on April 23, 1995. Since then, it has become a worldwide movement celebrating books and encouraging children to read.

When is World Book Day 2025? Date, £1 books, and fun ways to celebrate 30 years

The news article lists books that will cost just £1 during this event. Or you can look on the World Book Day website. Here’s all the books.

World Book Day 2025 falls on Thursday, March 6. Many UK schools encourage children to dress as their favourite character and bring the accompanying book.

In schools that celebrate World Book Day, children share their favourite books, discuss the stories, and explain why they chose their characters. Some schools even hold competitions for the most authentic costumes.

When is World Book Day 2025? Date, £1 books, and fun ways to celebrate 30 years