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Surviving REDgroup crisis and not doing badly, thanks.

“To say 2011 in the book industry was tumultuous would be a gross understatement.” – Australian Booksellers President Jon Page (pictured below).

Having survived the Productivity Commission’s attempt to further open the Australian book market to international players in 2010, the last thing the Australian book trade needed in 2011 was more disruption.

A rising star of New Zealand fiction writing whose first novel had a big international impact has been awarded a six-month residency in Auckland in 2012.

Eleanor Catton’s first novel The Rehearsal (pictured right) was released in New Zealand and the United Kingdom in 2008-09, and translation rights have been sold in 12 languages. It won multiple New Zealand and international awards, including the Amazon.ca Best First Book Award (2011). It was on the longlist for the Orange Prize and for the International Dublin Writer’s Award, and on the shortlist for the Guardian First Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Award.

The five members of this year’s judging panel, charged with identifying the country’s best books published in 2010, bring with them wide-ranging talents and celebrated literary nous.