THE premier's literary awards in two states face significant changes. In Queensland, they have been axed by new Premier Campbell Newman, who decided to scrap them to ease pressure on the state budget by the massive sum of $230,000. As you can imagine, there has been a backlash against the move. In New South Wales, a review of the awards reported in November but so far the only change is that they are now to be run by the NSW State Library. This year, however, they will be presented in November rather than their usual May date during the Sydney Writers' Festival. Matters are of more concern in Queensland, where a group of book industry people has decided to stage its own awards. According to novelist Krissy Kneen, who with Matt Condon is the joint co-ordinator of the Queensland Literary Awards, they will be presented, as usual, just before the opening of the Brisbane Writers Festival. Sadly, there will be no cash involved. ''It's such a shame for the authors,'' Kneen told Bookmarks, ''but they still want the recognition.'' Apparently, it would be difficult to organise the awards in the short time available to the committee if money were involved. However, don't rule out the chance next year provided sponsors and benefactors appear. The loose steering committee has already set up a website with full details of the new awards, which include all the old categories. And the good news is that Greg Bain, the boss of UQP, has said it would continue to publish the winners of the David Unaipon award for the best indigenous manuscript and the unpublished manuscript award. Entries close on May 6 so the awards can be announced in early September. See queenslandliteraryawards.com

Fire in the belly

LAST year judges for the Dublin IMPAC award whittled a list of 162 titles down to a shortlist of 10 and it was eventually won by Colum McCann for Let the Great World Spin. The books are nominated by libraries around the world. The shortlist for this year's prize, which is worth €100,000 ($127,000), was announced yesterday after this paper went to press. But one name on the list is Melbourne writer Jon Bauer, who was nominated by the State Library of Victoria for Rocks in the Belly. His book was also long-listed for the Miles Franklin last year. Bauer was chuffed to be on the shortlist because, as he pointed out, the long list is a made up of great books from around the world. It included Emma Donoghue's Room, Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad and Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. He also told Bookmarks he was always particularly pleased when booksellers and librarians liked his book. The winner will be announced on June 13.

Changing of the guard

ANTHONY Marshall took over at Alice's Bookshop in Carlton in 1992 and has since steered the second-hand bookshop through choppy waters. And he's managed to write a couple of books himself at the same time. But now he's sold Alice's and the business has been taken over by Ellen Boyd and Joshua Green, who are moving from Britain. Ellen is the granddaughter of Arthur Boyd. She was in Melbourne late last year and was very taken by the shop. But it was her sister who noticed it was for sale and the deal was done swiftly after that. Green completes his second week at Alice's today, with Boyd due over in a couple of months. He says he is not particularly daunted by the state of the market, saying the new-book sector seems more perilous than that for second-hand volumes. Marshall is moving to Germany and it seems somehow appropriate that the first book Green sold was Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. He will carry on selling Marshall's own books, although the first, Trafficking in Old Books, is pretty rare these days. To mark what Marshall calls the changing of the guard, Alice's is running a competition with a prize of a $500 book voucher. All you have to do is name all the people whose portraits are hanging on the shop walls. It's worth it: 18,500 books are in stock. Alice's Bookshop is at 629 Rathdowne Street.

Not all fun and games

THE American Library Association has produced a list of the books that last year received the most objections against their inclusion on the shelves of school and public libraries. Some surprising titles are on the list. Look at the Australian bestseller lists on this page and you can see the success of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy. Well, that accrued the third-most objections for being anti-ethnic, anti-family, using offensive language, etc. Top of the list were the Internet Girls series of novels by Lauren Myracle, ttyl; ttfn and l8r, g8r, about high-school girls Zoe, Maddie and Angela and their encounters with boys, drugs and alcohol. Myracle's books were the most challenged in 2009, according to ALA, and it seems nothing has changed with people objecting to the fact that they include offensive language, are sexually explicit and have a dodgy religious viewpoint. The other books in the top 10 were: The Color of Earth series by Kim Dong Hwa; My Mom's Having a Baby! A Kid's Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy by Dori Hillestad Butler; The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie; Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor; Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones; and Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar. Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story A Study in Scarlet was apparently banned by one Virginian school library after it was accused of portraying Mormons in a bad light.

Meloys hit a high note

LESS controversially, the US equivalent of our Indie awards were dished out last week. No controversy there; Jeffrey Eugenides - soon to visit Australia for the Sydney Writers' Festival and an appearance at the Wheeler Centre - won the fiction prize for The Marriage Plot, chef Gabrielle Hamilton won the non-fiction prize for her memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter, and a visitor here last year, Tea Obreht, won the debut of the year for The Tiger's Wife. Rather neatly, though, the ''middle reader read-aloud'' award was shared by brother and sister Maile Meloy (a guest at last year's Melbourne Writers Festival) and Colin Meloy for their books The Apothecary and Wildwood, respectively. Maile Meloy is better known as a writer of adult fiction such as Liars and Saints; Colin Meloy is probably better known as the lead singer of the Decemberists.