The start of a new month means that there's a new issue of Readings Monthly available online and in our shops. Below you can read Alison Huber's column from the latest issue – and keep an eye on the blog for more updates and recommended new releases throughout the month!

I’ve just landed at home following the annual BookPeople Conference (the Australian booksellers’ trade association gathering), though I didn’t have to travel all that far because it was held in Melbourne this year, marking the organisation’s 100th year. It was a sold-out event, with booksellers attending from around the country and New Zealand. The weekend was absolutely packed with author presentations and guest speakers, a huge trade show (with enough advance copies of the year’s big titles to fill all the tote bags in all the cupboards in my house and then some), a gala dinner, and so much more conversation than I’m used to having in such a short space of time that I’ve decided to take a vow of silence for the rest of the week. I think those of us lucky to attend this year have all arrived home buzzing with ideas and (if anyone needed it) a reinvigorated love of our industry, its people, and its reason for being: the technology of the book.

A highlight for me personally was hearing bookselling legends Suzy Wilson (recently retired owner of Riverbend in Brisbane), Fiona Stager (owner of Avid Reader in Brisbane and current owner of Riverbend), David Gaunt (owner of Gleebooks in Sydney) and our own Mark Rubbo reflect on their bookselling careers. It felt like a session that could have been scheduled to last an entire day, such is their collective knowledge and experience. There’s so much to learn from our elders, and their comments provided a lot of talking points for the rest of the conference.

There were a number of ‘pinch-me’ type moments in this year’s conference, including: the opening keynote from prize-winning Yuwaalaraay writer and musician Nardi Simpson, who introduced her new novel The Belburd (out in October), and ended her presentation with a song sung a cappella, to which everyone in attendance contributed; being in the same room as Noni Hazlehurst, a formative figure and early teacher to so many of us, and hearing her talk about her forthcoming memoir (out in October); listening to the captivating powerhouse who is Gina Chick, winner of the first season of Alone: Australia, who has an incredible life story she’s sharing in her memoir We Are the Stars (also October); learning so much from a panel on Indigenous publishing with contributions from Lilly Brown, CEO of Aboriginal owned and led publisher Magabala, multi-award winning author of We Come With This Place, Debra Dank, and head of publishing at the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, Nicola Robinson; hearing Robbie Arnott recite Banjo Paterson’s ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ and talk so thoughtfully about the way that Australian fiction simultaneously represents and creates Australia in his closing keynote (ahead of his fourth novel’s publication, Dusk, due in October too).

And then there was the gala dinner, and I don’t think anyone present will forget the address by one of the greats of Australian literature, Tim Winton (Juice is his new novel, which is in shops in – you guessed it – October) or the incredible performance by Australian music royalty and ARIA Hall of Fame inductee Kasey Chambers, which brought the congregation to its feet (and no prizes for telling me the month her biography is released).

I sadly can’t go into detail about everything that we saw, but I must give a special mention to the session hosted by Robert Skinner (author of one of my favourite books of 2023, I’d Rather Not) called ‘Oh Dear, Whatever Will You Do?’ in which Robert posed industry-specific hypothetical scenarios from the near-future of 2028, to a panel of writers, publishers, and booksellers, to hilarious effect – covering topics as diverse as reputation management, cancel culture, the ethics of book endorsement, the printing economy, the impact of AI, and more – in a session which was funny, generous, insightful, and disturbing all at once; a cautionary tale of the complexity of the publishing ecosystem and the fragility of its existence at this time of cultural, technological and environmental change. It was absolute genius and a joy to watch, and a reminder of our industry’s duty to think carefully, existentially, and creatively.

So much for the books of the future: we have the whole of July to bring you right now, and though my allocation of space is already far exceeded, I’ll risk the wrath of our dear Editor to point out to you our Fiction Book of the Month, Melbourne author Jordan Prosser’s near-future-dystopian-vision of a debut, Big Time. Our reviewer says, ‘Books like this are not only the reason I read Australian fiction, but also the reason I read at all’: I don’t think you can get a better endorsement than that!

You’ll also find highly anticipated new books from a previous winner of The Readings Prize, Alice Robinson, and the second novel from Jessie Tu (herself a shortlistee of the prize), as well as recommended reads from Dylin Hardcastle, Michelle See-Tho, and Finegan Kruckemeyer, plus the work of international authors Tracy Chevalier, Porochista Khakpour, Monika Kim, Madison Newbound, Julia Phillips, Yoko Tawada, August Thompson, and Fien Veldman.

We have a vibrant work of local Melbourne history in our Nonfiction Book of the Month, Madame Brussels: The Life and Times of Melbourne’s Most Notorious Woman by Barbara Minchinton with Philip Bentley, an international offering with Middle of the Night by Riley Sager as our Crime Book of the Month, and the latest from local crime legend Michael Robotham (also a speaker at the conference!), Storm Child.

And finally, dear reader, it’s time again for one of my favourite promos, thanks to our friends at Allen & Unwin: a 3 for 2 offer on selected fiction from the A&U stable, plus some of the UK publishers they represent in the Australian market. Look out for books from some authors with new works in store now or on the way later this year, including Ella Baxter, Michelle de Kretser, Rachel Cusk, Sally Rooney, Hiromi Kawakami, Mariana Enríquez, and Willy Vlautin, plus yet more of our best-loved authors.