The second Adelaide Festival of Ideas will happen in mid-July. Local participants will include Tim Flannery, Raimond Gaita, Marcia Langton, and Ronald Wilson, and, from overseas, John D. Barrow and Vandana Shiva. The advertised themes are water, population, reconciliation, addiction/intoxication, and cosmology – something for everyone.

The Australian/Vogel Literary Award, now in its twenty-first year, is on again. Entries must be lodged by the end of May. You don’t have to be twenty-one to enter – just under thirty-five. Winners are guaranteed publication by Allen & Unwin, and a cheque for $20,000.

Tim Curnow, managing director of Curtis Brown Australia, one of our biggest literary agencies, has retired. Curnow, the son of the great New Zealand poet Allen Curnow, has worked in the book trade for four decades in Australia and New Zealand.