A few years ago our events manager, Christine Gordon, some friends of Readings and I went to the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF). For lots of reasons it was the best literary festival I’d been to. Sorry Melbourne, sorry Sydney, sorry Adelaide and sorry Ubud, but none of you can match the vibrancy, diversity and sheer size of the JLF. This year, Readings has recruited Marieke Brugman to lead a tour to the 2015 JLF. Marieke has been taking tours to India for over 25 years and knows how to do it in great comfort and style. She has planned a very special tour for Readings: on our first day in Delhi, we’ll be given a private tour of the Qutub Minar followed by lunch at the beautiful Sanskriti Kendra (Cultural Centre) at the Sanskriti Foundation – established to create an appreciation of Indian traditional arts and culture – that includes a visit to the foundation’s museum led by the senior curator and founder, OP Jain. In the evening, Rana Dasgupta, author of the acclaimed book about Delhi, Capital, will join us for dinner and fill us in on the history of the city. In Jaipur, the heritage-listed Castle Kanota has been reserved for the Readings group. Members of the group will also be invited to attend special events during the festival. Confirmed guests of the 2015 JLF include Booker Prize-winner Eleanor Catton, historian Bettany Hughes, Hanif Kureishi, Mark Holland, VS Naipaul, and our own Christos Tsiolkas. For me, the most stimulating aspect of the festival I attended a few years ago was the strong contingent of authors from the subcontinent and other parts of Asia. I’ve booked my space for next year and I hope some of you will join me. For more details email Marieke Brugman on [email protected]. There is also the option of extending the tour following the festival to include a Rajasthan Cultural Tour.

We have just finished the first round of judging for the inaugural Readings New Australian Writing Award and the shortlisted books are on page 12. The intention of this award and its sister award, the Readings Children’s Book Prize, is to raise the profile of on-the-rise and debut Australian authors, bringing their works to a wider pool of readers. We give $4000 in prize money to the winner of each category. The winner of the Children’s Book Prize was Song for a Scarlet Runner by Julie Hunt and I’m particularly pleased that we’ve sold over 500 copies of the book since it was shortlisted, and it’s still going strong. Our New Australian Writing Award shortlist is diverse, ranging from Luke Carman’s innovative An Elegant Young Man to Fiona McFarlane’s impressively well-formed The Night Guest. The winner will be announced in the November issue of Readings Monthly, and I and the other Readings judges will be aided in making our final choice by Hannah Kent, author of the hugely successful first novel Burial Rites. Our meetings to choose the shortlist became quite passionate at times, so I’m looking forward to hearing Hannah’s views.

Finally, some of you may remember Wayne Larsen, who worked at Readings Carlton off and on from 1975 until 2005. Wayne sadly passed away last month – he was a wonderful bookseller and colleague.

Mark Rubbo