2007 in Australian literature

Events

Surrender by Sonya Hartnett, and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak are named as Honor Books in the 2007 American Library Association's Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature.

"The Guardian" newspaper from the UK reports that Borders plans to sell its Australian stores.

The small township of Clunes, about 20 kilometres north of Ballarat in Victoria, decides to try to set up Australia's first dedicated booktown. The first weekend event takes place on 20 May.

AustLit (www.austlit.edu.au), the major Australian literature resource for research and teaching housed at the University of Queensland, announces the commencement of "Black Words", a literary website specialising in Australian Indigenous writers and storytellers and their works.

Federal Education minister, Julie Bishop, announces that the Australian Government will allocate funds to A$1.5m to create a Chair of Australian Literature in an Australian university.

Charlie Rimmer, Group Commercial Manager for Angus and Robertson bookshops, writes to a number of Australian independent publishers indicating that the bookshop chain will refuse to stock their books without compensation.

Lonely Planet, the iconic Australian publisher of travel guides, is sold to the commercial division of the BBC in a deal reportedly worth A$200 million.

Australia's new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, announces a major new literary prize of $100,000 in both fiction and non-fiction categories.

Australia-Asia Literary Award established.

Literary fiction

David Brooks – The Fern Tattoo

Steven Carroll – The Time We Have Taken

Belinda Castles – The River Baptists

Jon Cleary – Four-Cornered Circle

J. M. Coetzee – Diary of a Bad Year

Matthew Condon – The Trout Opera

Steven Conte – The Zookeeper's War

Gregory Day – Ron McCoy's Sea of Diamonds

Michelle de Kretser – The Lost Dog

Nicholas Drayson – Love and the Platypus

Karen Foxlee – The Anatomy of Wings

Rodney Hall – Love Without Hope

Janette Turner Hospital – Orpheus Lost

Gail Jones – Sorry

Mireille Juchau – Burning In

Thomas Keneally – The Widow and Her Hero

Malcolm Knox – Jamaica

Christopher Koch – The Memory Room

Colleen McCullough – Antony and Cleopatra

Carol Lefevre – Nights in the Asylum

Rhyll McMaster – Feather Man

David Malouf – The Complete Stories

Alex Miller – Landscape of Farewell

Nicholas Shakespeare – Secrets of the Sea

Charlotte Wood – The Children

Jessica White – A Curious Intimacy

Geraldine Wooller – The Seamstress

Children's and Young Adult fiction

Alexandra Adornetto – The Shadow Thief

Sherryl Clark – Sixth Grade Style Queen (Not!), illus by Elissa Christian

Jackie French

Pharaoh: The Boy Who Conquered the Nile

The Shaggy Gully Times, illus by Bruce Whatley

Scot Gardner – Gravity

Sonya Hartnett – The Ghost's Child

John Heffernan – Marty's Shadow

Odo Hirsch – Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp

Simmone Howell – Notes from the Teenage Underground

Justine Larbalestier – Magic's Child

Brigid Lowry – Tomorrow All Will Be Beautiful

Meme McDonald – Love Like Water

David Metzenthen

Black Water

Winning the World Cup, illus by Stephen Axelsen

Garth Nix – Lady Friday

Leonie Norrington – Leaving Barrumbi

Emily Rodda – The Key to Rondo

Scott Westerfeld – Extras

Carole Wilkinson – Dragon Moon

Sean Williams – The Changeling

Crime and Mystery

Mark Abernethy – Golden Serpent

Robert G. Barrett – The Tesla Legacy

John Clanchy and Mark Henshaw (J.M. Calder) – And Hope to Die

Garry Disher – Chain of Evidence

Kathryn Fox – Skin and Bone

Robert Gott – Amongst the Dead

Kerry Greenwood – Trick or Treat

Jarad Henry – Blood Sunset

Sarah Hopkins – The Crimes of Billy Fish

Katherine Howell – Frantic

Gabrielle Lord – Shattered

Shane Maloney – Sucked In

PD Martin – Fan Mail

Dorothy Porter – El Dorado

Leigh Redhead – Cherry Pie

Michael Robotham – The Night Ferry

Steve Toltz – A Fraction of the Whole

Chris Womersley – The Low Road

Romance

Anna Campbell – Claiming the Courtesan

Emma Darcy – The Billionaire's Scandalous Marriage

Lilian Darcy – Cafe du Jour

Kimberley Freeman – Duet

Anna Jacobs – Tomorrow's Princess

Melanie La'Brooy – Serendipity

Tamara McKinley – Lands Beyond the Sea

Science Fiction and Fantasy

David Conyers & John Sunseri – The Spiraling Worm

Marianne de Pierres – Dark Space

Sara Douglass – The Serpent Bride

Lian Hearn – Heaven's Net is Wide

Jack Heath – Remote Control

David Kowalski – The Company of the Dead

Karen Miller – The Riven Kingdom

Jason Nahrung & Mil Clayton – The Darkness Within

Ben Peek – Black Sheep: A Dystopian Novel

Sean Williams – Saturn Returns

Drama

Stephen Carleton – The Narcissist

Michael Gow – Toy Symphony

Katherine Thomson – King Tide

Poetry

Judith Bishop – Event

David Brooks – Urban Elegies, Sydney: Island Press (Australia)

Lisa Gorton – Press Release

Kathryn Lomer – Two Kinds of Silence, University of Queensland Press, ISBN 978-0-7022-3612-9

David Malouf – Typewriter Music, winner of the 2008 Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award

Dorothy Porter – El Dorado

Peter Rose – The Best Australian Poems 2007, Black Inc., ISBN 978-1-86395-417-4

Peter Skrzynecki – Old/New World, University of Queensland Press, ISBN 978-0-7022-3586-3

Petra White – The Incoming Tide

Non-fiction

Janet Fife-Yeomans – Killing Jodie

Tom Griffiths – Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica

Clive James – Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time

Philip Jones – Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and Encounters on Australian Frontiers

Evan McHugh – Red Centre, Dark Heart

Nicolas Rothwell – Another Country

John Silvester and Andrew Rule – Underbelly: The Gangland War

Biographies

Philip Dwyer – Napoleon: The Path To Power 1769–1799

Kim Huynh – Where the Sea Takes Us

Mark Kurzem – The Mascot

Brenda Niall – Life Class: The Education of a Biographer

Craig Sherborne – Muck

Jeff Sparrow – Communism: A Love Story

Deaths

1 February – Elizabeth Jolley, author (born 1923)

22 February – Joyce Lee, poet (born 1913)

2 March – David A. Myers, poet and publisher (born 1942)

23 May – John Croyston, poet (born 1933)

11 July – Glenda Adams, author (born 1939)

11 July – Noel Rowe, poet (born 1951)

1 August – Mona Brand, playwright (born 1915)

24 August – Philip Grundy, translator (born 1932)

16 October – Steve J. Spears, author and playwright (born 1951)

31 October – Eric Rolls, author (born 1923)

24 December – Jan McKemmish, author (born 1950)