The 2009 Interactive Press (IP) Picks Awards for Unpublished Manuscripts are open for submissions until 1 December. Now in its eighth year, this national competition invites submissions for Best Fiction, Best Creative Non-fiction, Best Poetry and Best First Book. The Awards are open to citizens/residents of Australia, and, for the first time, citizens/residents of New Zealand. The winners in each category and two of the Highly Commended entrants are being published by IP under royalty contracts. One of the winners and one of the highly commended were subsequently endorsed by the Literature Board of the Australia Council. The winner for Best Poetry 2007 was Mark O'Flynn for his work What can be Proven. For entry forms and conditions visit the website www.ipoz.biz or send a self-addressed stamped envelope to IP, Treetop Studio, 9 Kuhler Court, Carindale 4152.

Cutwater is an upcoming literary anthology that will collect the best in Australian writing from new and emerging authors. With the assistance of an Australia Council Write In Your Face grant, Cutwater is currently seeking work from around the nation - fiction, literary non-fiction, poetry, zines, comics and anything in between - to be published in glorious book form in 2009. The theme of Cutwater's inaugural volume is 'Ratbags'. Writers are invited to send up to three submissions of 5,000 words or less, via post only by 30 November, to: Cutwater Literary Journal PO BOX 52 Toukley NSW 2263 For more details on submissions go to the blog at: http://www.cutwaterjournal.blogspot.com/ Let out the inner ratbag.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced the winners of the PM's Literary Awards. He said the judging panel are to be commended for the meticulous and thoughtful consideration they have given to the selection of Australian fiction and non-fiction entered in these new awards. Both winners receive a prize of $100,000 each. The winners are: Non-fiction: Ochre and Rust by Philip Jones takes Aboriginal artefacts from their museum shelves and traces their stories, revealing charged and nuanced moments of encounter in Australia's frontier history. Fiction: The Zookeepers' War by Steven Conte is a story of passion and sacrifice in a city battered by war. It is 1943 and each night in a bomb shelter beneath the Berlin Zoo an Australian woman, Vera, shelters with her German husband, Axel, the zoo's director. It confronts not only the brutality of war but the possibility of heroism. For more details on the awards go to: http://www.arts.gov.au/books/pmliteraryawards

Matilda Blog states the "Crime Downunder" weblog has reported on the shortlists for the 2008 Ned Kelly Awards for Best Australian crime fiction. The awards presentation is being held on Friday August 29th as a part of the Melbourne Writers' Festival. It is great to see Books Alive 2008 ambassador Michael Robotham on the list. And the nominees are:

Best Crime Fiction Among the Dead by Robert Gott (Scribe), Sucked In by Shane Maloney (Text), El Dorado by Dorothy Porter (Pan Macmillan) and Shatter by Michael Robotham (Hachette Livre).

Best First Crime Novel The Low Road by Chris Womersley (Scribe), A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz (Penguin), Golden Serpent by Mark Abernethy (Allen & Unwin).

Best Non Fiction Underbelly: The Gangland War by John Silvester and Andrew Rule (Sly Ink), Killing Jodie by Janet Fife-Yeomans (Penguin) and Red Centre, Dark Heart by Evan McHugh (Penguin).

And you can find Matilda Blog here: http://www.middlemiss.org/weblog/archives/matilda/2008/07/2008_ned_kelly_1.html