The lawyer representing the Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams has said he too has been prevented from promoting her memoir under a legal ruling, after her silent appearance at the Hay festival.

Ravi Naik said the terms of an arbitration proceeding meant neither Wynn-Williams nor her “agents” could promote her bestselling book Careless People or say anything disparaging about the company.

Naik spoke after Wynn-Williams was forced to sit in silence during an appearance at Hay on Sunday owing to the terms of the ruling. Naik said an interim arbitration ruling meant she risked being forced to pay “punitive” damages if he promoted the book.

“Never in my life have I faced a circumstance where my client cannot speak about her truth and I as a lawyer cannot speak on behalf of my client,” he told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Monday.

Meta has claimed the book, which made a series of claims about the social media company’s behaviour and culture, is false and defamatory. It also contained allegations of sexual harassment that were denied by the company. Meta says Wynn-Williams was fired for “poor performance and toxic behaviour”.

Naik said Meta’s stance on Wynn-Williams’s Hay appearance was not a “hypothetical threat”.

Meta had said in writing that they considered Wynn-Williams’s attendance at the Hay talk would be a “breach” of the interim arbitration award, according to Naik, and they would seek sanctions if she promoted the book or criticised Meta in her appearance. Nail said Meta would probably seek to uphold the arbitration award, handed down in California, through the British courts.

Wynn-Williams was due to appear on stage in conversation with the investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr and the academic Tim Wu but spent the scheduled hour sitting in front of the audience without speaking. She was also unable to nod or shake her head.

Introducing the panel, Cadwalladr said: “I think this might be a Hay first, in which we have an author in a hostage situation. Blink once if you can hear us, Sarah, twice if [Mark] Zuckerberg is an asshole.”

In testimony before a Senate judiciary subcommittee last year, Wynn-Williams alleged Meta worked “hand in glove” with China over censorship tools – something the company has denied.

The Republican senator Josh Hawley claimed at the hearing that Wynn-Williams had been threatened with a fine of $50,000 (£37,000) every time she mentioned Facebook in public. However, the BBC reported that, according to Meta, she faced paying those damages for each violation of the separation agreement that she signed when she left the company in 2017.

The Labour MP Louse Haigh claimed last year that Wynn-Williams was being “pushed to financial ruin” by Meta’s legal stance.

Meta declined to comment directly on Wynn-William’s Hay appearance. It has previously described Careless People as a “mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives”.

The Book of Birds delivers a stark warning in its introduction about the “great thinning of the skies … Dawns and springs are quieter; the air emptier. An ancient avian orchestra is falling silent.”

There are now 3 billion fewer birds in North America than there were 50 years ago, and 5 million fewer in Europe. Across the world, almost 50% of bird species are in decline. These figures are the galvanising force behind writer and illustrator Jackie Morris and nature writer Robert Macfarlane’s compendium of 49 bird species under threat in Britain. Each entry is a prose poem aimed at evoking the spirit and the unique qualities of each bird, among them the kingfisher, nightingale, nightjar, song thrush, tern, tawny owl and puffin.

Macfarlane narrates the bird entries, which also include the avocet, which “[when] seen at sunset in silhouette seems blown from glass – as if breath of wind would leave her in shards amid the sea reeds, the fescue, the eelgrass”. Meanwhile, Morris reads the “seven wonders of bird”, a series of short essays hailing the remarkable inventions that are feathers, nests, beaks and eggs, the latter acting as a “space station, shock absorber, bathysphere, safe harbour, first home”.

The audio edition also features terrific sound design courtesy of field recordist Chris Watson, known for his work with David Attenborough. Watson has meticulously recorded the call of each bird and incorporated them into each chapter. This blend of lyrical prose and birdsong make for moving love letter to our feathered friends.

Available viaFiona Sturges Penguin, 3hr 38min

Further listening

Clown Town
Mick Herron, Baskerville, 12hr 6min
The ninth Slough House novel from Herron tells of hidden agendas, a cover-up concerning IRA infiltration and a villain with a grim murder technique that involves running over their victim’s head with a Land Rover. Sean Barrett narrates.

Confessions
Catherine Airey, Penguin Audio, 12hr 19min
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks leave Cora Brady orphaned, she is sent to live with an estranged aunt in rural Ireland where family secrets are unearthed. Read by a cast of narrators including Eileen O’Higgins, Bronagh Waugh and Ruby Campbell.

Zeno Sworder’s beautifully illustrated picture book Once I Was a Giant, which tells the tale of a tree transformed into a pencil who writes its own story, has won book of the year at the 2026 Australian Book Industry Awards.

It’s the Melbourne writer and illustrator’s third children’s book, following My Strange Shrinking Parents (2023) – winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary prize; and This Small Blue Dot (2021), which took home best new illustrator at the Children’s Book Council of Australia awards.

Sworder’s hopeful and poetic bedtime read, written for ages zero to six, covers the span of a tree’s life and its relationships with the world around it. It also won the 2026 Victorian Premier’s Literary award for children’s literature in February, with the judges calling it “profoundly moving” with “glowing illustrations”.

At a ceremony in Sydney on Thursday night, the beloved children’s writer Mem Fox was recognised in the hall of fame for “outstanding service to the Australian book industry”. Earlier this year, Fox’s classic Possum Magic was voted No 2 in Guardian Australia’s reader poll of the best Australian picture book of all time. Author and former bookseller Paul Macdonald, who owned the Children’s Bookshop in Sydney for close to two decades, was also honoured in the hall of fame.

The annual awards, now in its 26th year, are judged by more than 50 representatives from publishing houses, distributors, literary journalists, agents, booksellers and librarians.

Winners of the adult book categories included Sally Hepworth’s thriller Mad Mabel, which was presented with the general fiction and the audiobook awards; Geraldine Brooks’ memoir Memorial Days, which won in the biography category; and the Mushroom Tapes by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein, which won the prize for general nonfiction.

A Piece of Red Cloth, a collaborative historical novel written by Leonie Norrington, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Djawa Burarrwanga and Djawundil Maymura, about a Yolŋu elder trying to protect their granddaughter from being kidnapped, won social impact book of the year.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy won the literary fiction book of the year, and the Matt Richell award for new writer of the year was awarded to Angie Faye Martin for crime drama Melaleuca.

A “highly original” nonfiction by Melbourne historian Clare Wright, charting the creation of the Yirrkala Bark Petitions – a seminal moment in Australia’s history of land rights – has won book of the year at the NSW literary awards.

The Petitions were landmark documents presented by Yolŋu elders to the Australian parliament in 1963 on painted bark frames, which sought government intervention after a portion of Arnhem Land Reserve was licensed to a French mining company. Though it didn’t halt mining on the land, the petitions led to the first land rights legislation in Australia, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.

Written more like a novel than a historical nonfiction, Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions treats its subjects as characters, bringing the reader along with their political aspirations and acts of resilience, without the sense of inevitability that usually accompanies a work of history.

At a ceremony at the NSW state library on Monday night, Näku Dhäruk won the $10,000 top prize along with the $40,000 Douglas Stewart prize for nonfiction. Judges called the book “a work of national significance”, saying the personal accounts included in the narrative felt “vividly alive” with “an extraordinary depth of research and sophisticated scholarship”.

“It is a book that should be read by all Australians,” judges said.

Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions is the third in Wright’s “democracy trilogy” about three defining moments in Australia’s political history, including the 2014 Stella prize-winning Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, which shares the stories of women who united during the 1850s Eureka Stockade, and You Daughters of Freedom, about white Australian women winning the right to vote.

Wright, who was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2020 for her outstanding “service to literature, and to historical research”, has already picked up multiple awards for Näku Dhäruk, including the 2025 Australian Political book of the year. Speaking to Guardian Australia before she knew she had won the main prize at the NSW literary awards, the author joked that her book’s cover design is now “more stickers than cover”. “If it was a bottle of wine, you would be buying a case,” she said, laughing.

Wright spent a decade writing Näku Dhäruk. She calls the 640-page work “collaborative”, speaking of her time living and working with the Yirrkala community.

“The Yolŋu people wanted me to tell it because they wanted Australia to know their story,” she said. “Readers who have spent time in north-east Arnhem Land with Yolŋu people tell me that [reading the book] felt like going home, it felt like being … in that very special remarkable part of the world.”

The La Trobe University professor is considered a culturally adopted member of the Yunupiŋu family, she said; it was 1978 Australian of the Year Galarrwuy Yunupiŋu who gave Wright the language title of the book in 2020. Näku means “bark” and Dhäruk means “the word” or “message” in Yolŋu matha (tongue).

“There was a lot of nervousness as to whether the Australian public would be able to cope with a book that had a language title,” Wright said. The fact that it’s had its fourth print in just over a year is proof “there is a hunger and a desire to read stories that enrich our sense of the nation’s past”.

Other winners on Monday night included Moreno Giovannoni, who won the $40,000 Christina Stead prize for fiction for The Immigrants – “an absolute gem of a novel,” said the judges, which blends fiction and family memoir.

The Multicultural NSW award went to playwright S Shakthidharan for Gather Up Your World in One Long Breath, a “lyrical” book that “expands the genre of memoir”, the judges said.

In the children’s book categories, Gone by Michel Streich won the Patricia Wrightson prize for children’s literature and Marly Wells and Linda Wells shared the Ethel Turner prize for young people’s literature for Desert Tracks.

The Black Woman of Gippsland by Andrea James took home the Nick Enright prize for playwriting, and the Betty Roland prize for scriptwriting went to Shaun Grant for episode four of the drama miniseries The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

The Kenneth Slessor prize for poetry was awarded to Jill Jones for How to Emerge, which judges said was “a mastery of catalogue and repetition”.

The Indigenous Writers’ prize went to Natalie Harkin for Apron-Sorrow / Sovereign-Tea, praised for covering “a brutal chapter in our history”, about First Nations women being used as indentured servants in South Australia.

Micaela Sahhar won the UTS Glenda Adams award for new writing for a “deeply moving, confronting and life-affirming book”, Find Me at the Jaffa Gate. And the University of Sydney’s people’s choice award went to Emily Maguire for the author’s “rapturous” prose in historical novel Rapture.

Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams and the late Virginia Giuffre have jointly won the Freedom to Publish prize at this year’s British book awards, marking the first time the award has been shared.

Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook executive, was recognised for Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism, her bestselling memoir about her years inside Meta, formerly Facebook. The book makes allegations about the company’s internal culture and practices, including its approach to political influence, China and the wellbeing of teenagers. Meta has disputed the claims.

Giuffre received the award posthumously for Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, which recounts the abuse she said she suffered at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and others.

The award, presented by Yulia Navalnaya and supported by the free expression organisation Index on Censorship, was established in 2022 to highlight threats to writers, publishers and booksellers, and to recognise those who resist attempts at censorship.

Speaking at the ceremony, Wynn-Williams used a rare public appearance to warn of the growing influence of wealthy elites over public discourse and institutions.

“We are all living in a world that now, more than ever, is dominated by networks of powerful elites, whose wealth too often puts them above the law,” she said. “As they rewrite the rules, they grow arrogant with entitlement and impunity.”

Wynn-Williams has herself faced legal restrictions since the publication of Careless People. Meta secured a legal order on the eve of publication preventing her from publicly discussing aspects of the book, and she faces fines of $50,000 each time she breaches the order.

Referring to Giuffre’s memoir, Wynn-Williams said: “Virginia understood who silence protected and realised that only truth can protect everyone else.” She added that Giuffre had faced “coordinated suppression efforts, intimidation and litigation” after speaking publicly about Epstein and Maxwell.

“But here’s a strange thing,” Wynn-Williams said. “When you try that hard to silence a woman who is telling the truth, you announce to the whole world that the truth must be very dangerous indeed.”

“Virginia spent years exhausted by a battle she should never have had to fight,” she continued. “She did not get the ending her story deserves.”

Mike Harpley, publisher at Pan Macmillan, praised Wynn-Williams’s “astonishing bravery” in writing Careless People.

“She is now facing a considerable personal, legal and financial toll for bringing to light issues of crucial public interest, both here in the UK and internationally,” he said. “It is a breathtaking irony that while her book helped spark a global reckoning for social media, she is unable to take part in the conversation, silenced by a company that claims to champion free speech.”

Giuffre killed herself in April 2025, shortly before the publication of Nobody’s Girl. She began working on the memoir with journalist Amy Wallace in 2020, documenting both the abuse she alleged she suffered and the years she spent battling powerful individuals and institutions. She was a prominent accuser of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who repeatedly and strongly denied the accusations.

Accepting the award through a recorded message, Wallace said: “We worked together for more than four years, and it was the honour of my career … She always wanted this book to reach as many people as possible, and she particularly wanted it to help other survivors of sexual abuse, not just those who suffered at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, but anyone who’s been coerced into a sexual situation, and she’s clearly done that.”

Giuffre’s brother, Sky Roberts, said she had “inspired millions upon millions” by “speaking truth to power”, adding that she showed “an ordinary person can do extraordinary things”.

The Freedom to Publish award has previously been given to authors including Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Boris Akunin, whose books were banned in Russia after his criticism of Vladimir Putin.

Jemimah Steinfeld, chief executive of Index on Censorship, said the two books demonstrated how “the rich and powerful use legal pressure to try to silence those with less capital”. “The circumstances are very different and the stories are not morally comparable,” Steinfeld said, “but they share similarities.”

The British Book Awards celebrate authors, publishers and industry professionals across the UK book trade, in association with trade publisher The Bookseller. Elsewhere at this year’s awards, AF Steadman was named author of the year, Philippa Gregory won the fiction prize for Boleyn Traitor, and Florence Knapp took debut fiction book of the year for The Names, a bestselling novel exploring the long-term effects of domestic abuse.

When the artist Jackie Morris collaborated with the writer Robert Macfarlane to celebrate the names of plants and animals controversially removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary, they never imagined their book, The Lost Words, would become a cultural phenomenon.

Grassroots crowdfunding ensured the book was bought and donated to more than three-quarters of primary schools in England, Wales and Scotland and to every hospice in the country.

The book sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide and was turned into classical concerts, albums, theatre, hospital murals, jigsaws and boardgames. An exhibition toured for more than a decade and the movement became the subject of a recent film, Lost For Words.

Nine years on, the pair’s new collaboration, The Book of Birds, aims to open all eyes to the wonder and peril of 49 species on the British red or amber list of declining and endangered birds. With paintings by Morris and words by Macfarlane, the book is a twist on the classic field guides that inspired both authors, evoking the spirit and poetry of birds from avocet to yellowhammer.

Morris, who has sold more than 1m books worldwide, was galvanised by the Reader’s Digest Book of British Birds as a child. “It opened my eyes to life that is not human and is around me,” she said. “I hope there are young people who will find The Book of Birds and that it gives them that anchor and also wings. I also hope it helps birds become visible to those who don’t see them. It’s more important than any other book I’ve done.”

Macfarlane said: “We wondered what a field guide or bird book would look like if it asked not ‘what is that bird?’, but ‘who is that bird?’; if it worked to help readers not only identify birds, but also identify with them. There are 3 billion fewer birds in North America than 50 years ago; 600 million fewer in Europe. Our skies are thinner, our springs quieter. This is a savage loss. We wanted, in paint and word, to pull birds back into focus and splendour – and warn against their vanishing.”

Morris, whose favourite painting in the book is of the shearwaters she watches from her home on the Welsh coast, admits she is never satisfied with her bird paintings. “Can you ever do justice to something so beautiful? The wildlife artist Charles Tunnicliffe is so much more accurate than me, but I am always chasing a life-force and the soul of a creature when I’m trying to paint.”

The book, which took seven years to make, has already inspired an exhibition at the Bodleian library, The Wonder of Birds, which opens on 6 May and features unseen work by the pioneering ornithological photographer Emma Turner, art from the legendary 19th-century American bird illustrator John James Audubon, and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s original handwritten annotations for To a Skylark.

Will The Book of Birds become another Lost Words? “I’ve never known a book to do things like the Lost Words did before,” Morris said. “I don’t think you can get that twice in a lifetime, can you? Is it going to be a catalyst for creativity in other people? I hope so.”

Bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula)

Plump little Bullfinch (Plum Bird, Bulldog) perched among the orchard branches, plucking at the buds. Pink little Bullfinch (Lum Budder, Blood Olp) puffing out your salmon chest and swaying as you sing. Burly little Bullfinch (staunch neck, stout beak) piping out your creaky notes, there amid the blossom. Ripe rosy Bullfinch (crisp apple, bright bauble) lighting up the winter trees, calling in the frost.

Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus)

Killer with the barred chest, the brown cloak, the blue hood: assassin of the bluebell wood. Fabulous, murderous Sparrowhawk, you’re the bolt loosed from the ratcheted bow, the bullet from the barrel. Whipcrack speed and utter focus: the strike’s past, the hit done, wickedly fast, before we even realize it’s begun. When you’re around, the birdworld shudders, huddles, paranoid. Alarm calls spike the air. Too late: target located, locked on, destroyed.

… I once watched as you mantled over a back-garden kill. Then your implacable, crocodile eyes flicked to mine – and the blast-doors of a furnace opened. Suburban bird-god, hawkheaded Horus, your irises are greenish-yellow when you’re young, then darken as you age, from buttercup to burnt orange, and then at last to diabolic late-day red, maximum threat, as if you were heading into your own sunset.

Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus)

Where to start with you, Cuckoo? Your one-two call, perhaps, from high on oak or yew, which heralds spring anew then beats out summer’s hot tattoo. The curious beauty of your feathers; their smalty blue, their smoky, petrol hue. And we must not forget, of course, the chilling trick you pull on other birds – your devious, monstrous switcheroo.

… But perhaps no other bird marks time and place the way you do. I know this for sure, Cuckoo: without you, April would not bloom so true. Year after year we prick our ears and wait to hear your call peal out clear over sea-cliff and suburb, cemetery and heath, hill and combe. There are fewer and fewer of you, Cuckoo, but it’s still the case that the first time your crooked call rings spring in, it confirms the trueness of the turning world. It’s relief, release – an exhalation. We’re still alive. We’re still here.

Rook (Corvus frugilegus)

Rook, Rook, everyday crook, hawker of goods, cooker of books; Rook, Rook, of the bald white bill and the barefaced cheek; Rook, Rook, blackmarketeer of the rocking, stocky, blocky gait – three hops forwards, then one away; Rook, Rook, aka the Cra, the Craw, the Caa, the Croaker, the Brandre, the Brancher, the Percher, the pale-masked ’Daw!

Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella)

Goldsmith of the hedgerows, Yellowhammer forges sunlight into coins and chains of precious metal, on the anvil of hawthorn’s leaf, spindle’s berry and blackthorn’s petal. Yellowhammer turns footpath to treasure chest, field into Wunderkammer. Yellowhammer’s a lark dipped in ochre, a scrubland canary, a twenty-four-carat sparrow. Yellowhammer doesn’t hide his light under a bush; he sings from topmost twigs, from allotment spades and sprays of broom – he fires out his witty song with its spiky clamour, its unmistakable seven short notes and one long, carried on the breeze: Little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheese! Little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheese!

Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus)

Look – there are lapwings, facing the wind in fours and fives on fallow fields, hunkered on floodplains, floating over abandoned airfields, glimpsed from car, from train, in sunlight and rain. These are birds of farmland and marsh, lowland and levels, mud and grass and divot, who’ve followed the plough for a thousand years or more. Now, though, the great flocks of lapwings are gone, where once there were birds in such number that when they wheeled in flight it seemed the sky itself was on a pivot.

Corncrake (Crex crex)

Corncrake, that crazy, screwball caper-call of yours is also your name: crex-crex, crex-crex, crex-crex it goes, as you straighten your legs, flex your neck, then over and over and over again – a thousand times an hour or more – let rip a sound that carries a mile or six, a rasping, seismic hex that wrecks all chance of sleep; a vexing gameshow-buzzer; a gearbox grind; a pair of brief electric shocks; a no-subtext booty call; a double-blasted klaxon; plectrum on chitin; a c dragged over an x.

Turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur)

Heat lies heavy on the land, and high summer’s yellow stalks the meadows, leonine and patient. The river winds slow and fat through fields, cricketers move drowsy on the green, muffled bells peal from church towers, and through it all churrs the lulling, lazy plainchant of Turtle Dove – po-oorrrrrpooorrrrr-pooorrrr, po-oorrrr-pooorrrr-pooorrrr, over and over again – keeping the liturgy of hours. This is a song for daytime sleep; soft and soothing as cream; a hazy noon lullaby, a siesta dream.

An Australian publishing house has cancelled the publication of a children’s book by an award-winning Indigenous poet over comments the book’s illustrator made about the victims of the Bondi beach terror attack, whom he called “affluent beneficiaries of imperialism”.

University of Queensland said on Wednesday its publishing house would not proceed with the publication of Bila, A River Cycle, written by Jazz Money and illustrated by Matt Chun, and was considering “recycling options” for already printed copies.

The university said the decision was due to comments Chun made in an online article that “do not align with the University’s policies and values including in light of its adopted definition of antisemitism”.

In response to the decision – first reported on the independent news site Lamestream – several authors said they would terminate their contracts or refuse to work with the Brisbane publisher in future, but the Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies welcomed the move, saying the university had taken a stand against “hate, vitriol and grotesque propaganda”.

Those authors include the Goorie and Koori poet Evelyn Araluen, the high-profile Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah and the award-winning First Nations author Melissa Lucashenko, who called the move an “egregious decision”.

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In January, University of Queensland Press paused publishing the book – described as “a lyrical journey through Country” which tells the story of a river that takes on human form – while it considered Chun’s comments.

Chun published a Substack post titled “We don’t mourn fascists” on 1 January about the Bondi beach attack, deploring what he called the “liberal capitulation” to the “Zionist framing” that “violence that impacts the affluent beneficiaries and perpetrators of imperialism is deserving of special attention, elaborate memorials, rolling media coverage, and international headlines”.

New South Wales police confirmed on Thursday that the Engagement and Hate Crime Unit was investigating Chun’s post.

“Whiteness, Jewishness, and the backdrop of Bondi Beach were enough to bestow every person killed with default innocence and virtue,” Chun wrote. “White, Jewish settler victimhood demands exceptional, heightened grief.

“‘We don’t mourn fascists’ has been a popular refrain from the Australian left. How quickly this slogan is discarded when the idyll of colonial Bondi is ruptured.”

Fifteen people were killed in the terror attack on 14 December, including a child aged 10.

The president of the Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies, Jason Steinberg, commended UQP’s move.

“Publishing a book, no matter the topic, whose illustrator [expresses views such as Chun’s] would be unacceptable,” he said.

“It is exactly these types of sentiments expressed by a range of individuals that have enabled hate and falsehoods to fester in Australia. This creates a putrid environment for the worst terrorist attack to occur on Australian shores, specifically targeting Jewish Australians.”

Chun told Guardian Australia – which he referred to as a “liberal-imperialist” publication in his post – that he stood by “every word” of the article, “which was deeply considered and written in close consultation with Jewish comrades”.

“It will stand the test of history,” he wrote in an email. “UQP have capitulated to Zionist lobbyism and sustained pressure from pro-Israel media. We should be both disgusted and unsurprised by this.”

In January The Australian described Chun’s comments as a “tirade against Jews and Zionists”.

The bookseller Dymocks pulled other works by Chun from its shelves in January.

Money said she believed thousands of copies of Bila, A River Cycle had been printed. She said Wednesday’s decision would damage her financially and reputationally, but she was most concerned about the “really disturbing precedent it set”.

“It sucks for me that my book is getting cancelled,” she said. “But the thing to me that is most pressing about this whole story is the precedent that this sets: that even a kids’ book about a river written by an Aboriginal person on Aboriginal land can be destroyed because of a right wing media campaign.”

A UQ spokesperson denied the university was “pulping” Money’s book, saying “the books remain in storage while the University considers recycling options”.

“The University regrets the impact this matter has on … Jazz Money,” the spokesperson said. “We have enormous respect for Jazz and her work and we would welcome the opportunity to work with Jazz again in the future.”

But Money said she no longer trusted the publisher she has worked with since 2020, when she won the David Unaipon award for an emerging Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writer.

The poet said the publisher’s reason for cancelling the book which they had worked on for about five years was “disingenuous” as Bila had “not got anything to do with antisemitism or Israel or Palestine”.

“The book is about a river,” she said. “It’s a beautiful book that is so gentle and lovely – and it wasn’t written by Matt. It was written by me.”

Lucashenko, the author of ​​the multi-award-winning novel Edenglassie, said she was getting legal advice about her upcoming book Blood on the Tiles, which is set to be published by UQP next year.

“It is not only silencing an Indigenous author, it’s caving in to the Murdoch press,” said the First Nations writer, who has been working with the publishing house for 30 years. “And it makes me want to put an ancestral curse on the lot of them.”

Araluen said she had written to UQP on Wednesday, saying its “shameful and abhorrent decision to pulp the work of a fellow Aboriginal storyteller without due process, communication, respect or consideration” had caused her to terminate of her relationship with the publisher immediately.

She told Guardian Australia that would involve rescinding a contract on an upcoming nonfiction book and paying back a $2,500 advance.

“For these books to be pulped is so egregiously culturally violent and wasteful and disrespectful and has absolutely demonstrated that the University of Queensland Press does not see our writers and our stories as people or as living things, that one has to be responsible to, but actually just sees us as commodities,” she said.

Abdel-Fattah said UQP had “chosen to indulge a coordinated outrage campaign designed to intimidate, delegitimise, and chill dissent”, saying that as a result Discipline would be her “first and last book with them”.

Other writers to terminate their relationship with the publisher on Wednesday included Natalia Figueroa Barroso and Sara M Saleh.

When we hear the beautiful call of a bird from a high bough, we’re told it’s likely to be a male – singing for territory, or belting out tunes to woo a female. But as the annual dawn chorus reaches a crescendo this spring, a new guidebook is urging us to think again – and turn our ears to the hidden world of female birdsong.

The songs, sounds and sights of female birds have historically been overlooked in field guides and sound archives. In 2016, just 0.01% of the bird sounds in the global Xeno-Canto sound library were labelled female. Another sound archive was just 0.03% female, according to a 2018 study.

But the new book – The Sound Approach to Birding 2 – aims to correct this under-representation and properly explain female birdsong. Female birds sing for territorial displays, to ward off other females and to attract extra males, according to Lucy McRobert, a writer and researcher who studied the issue for the guidebook.

The book comes with its own library of 300 sounds from 200 species, accessed via web or app. The clips are drawn from the larger online archive of Sound Approach, a birdsong project founded in 2000 with confirmed recordings of females for 41% of species found in the Western Palearctic, a biogeographical region encompassing Europe, north Africa and most of the Middle East.

“We’ve got a completely false narrative around female bird sounds and female birdsong,” McRobert said. “The common narrative is that males sing to compete for territory and female attention. Actually, the situation is far more complicated than that. Female birds do sing. Many species have female song repertoires and you can separate some males and females by song.”

Male European ornithologists were not simply sexist, they exported their assumptions about male birdsong around the world based on the fact that male song predominates among the songbirds of the Western Palearctic. In fact, globally, up to 70% of female bird species sing. Among many tropical birds, females sing just as vividly as males – in duets for pair bonding, to ward off other females or to support territorial defence. Just like males, females may also sing to advertise their availability.

Mark Constantine, the author of the new book and a co-founder of Lush cosmetics, said: “Everything we believe about our birdsong isn’t true. I love the fact that Donald Duck is actually a female – he quacks like a female. Most people don’t realise that the female mallards quack and the males don’t.”

Constantine was inspired to take a closer look at female bird sounds by Jasmine Donahaye, the author of Birdsplaining, which highlights the sexism of field guides from the 1950s to the 1980s. In the illustrations of the guides she grew up with, Donahaye noticed how the male birds were drawn in an “upright, bold, declarative” position while the females were often depicted in the background, half-obscured by the male, and “bent over, submissive and demure”.

“Female birds are always described in these field guides in relation to the description of male birds. She’s always ‘paler’ or ‘duller’ – some kind of negation of him,” she said. “Sometimes it doesn’t even specify that the female is bigger.”

Constantine asked McRobert to “Donahaye” the new book to ensure female bird sound was fully considered. They had some surprising revelations.

Alpine accentor females sing an irresistible song when alone, and swiftly attract male company – and copulation. Older females who lay the biggest clutches of eggs are the ones with the more elaborate songs. Female song in this species can be identified by prominent rattling sounds strung out in a row.

The tawny owl’s “tu-whit” call is often considered to be female, answered by the male’s returning “to-who”. In fact, according to the Sound Approach team, male and female tawny owls can make either call.

Constantine and his sound recordists believe the “tu-whit, to-who” popularised by Shakespeare was actually the playwright’s putting into words the call of a long-eared owl, which much more closely matches Shakespeare in their sound recordings. In reality, tawny owls sound much more like “ker-wick” followed by a quavering “woooo”.

Although there are few documented cases of female garden songbirds such as thrushes singing, female robins sing for certain periods during winter. Constantine’s sound recordists proved this by ringing female birds and then watching and recording them sing, although Constantine admits they haven’t yet been able to identify distinguishing features of female robin song.

As well as singing, Constantine argues that female birds set the ever-changing trends in songbird songs, with research showing that males who sing in the latest style are rewarded with the best territories and mates.

“The female bird conducts the orchestra. She chooses in all regards what the male birds are going to sing – that’s mind-boggling,” he said. “It’s so refreshing to have another think about it all. When people get deeper into bird sound, they are not allowed to ignore the difference between male and female sounds. It’s happening now, especially among the more nerdy, computer-based birders like us.”

Donahaye said she hoped the new recognition for female birdsong would lead to insights into the complexities of bird behaviour. She said: “How much have we missed because we weren’t asking a question because the assumption was that males sing for all these reasons and females don’t sing? It will be very interesting to see what more research shows up.”

Quacks, churrs and keets

Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)

Appearance: Like most ducks, the males are showy with iridescent green heads; camouflage is more important for the dappled brown females who incubate the eggs and rear the chicks.

Sounds: The females quack. The males – apart from Donald – don’t. Instead, they give a quieter, slightly rasping call of one or two notes.

Nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus)

Appearance: Both male and female are fantastically camouflaged with mottled plumage that resembles tree bark. The males have white markings on their wingtips and tail, which are flashed when displaying to other males or females.

Sounds: The males are known for their distinctive nocturnal “churring”, which sounds more like a machine or wind-up toy than a bird. According to The Sound Approach to Birding 2, the females will give the same kind of “churr”, but only occasionally, such as when they are moving nest sites.

Barn swallow (Hirundo rustica)

Appearance: Females have shorter tail streamers than the males and paler buff-white or light-brown underparts. Males have deeper red-brown colouring underneath.

Sounds: Females sing alongside males during courtship, with both sexes employing rather tuneless continuous twitter-warbles and rapid-fire whirrs for up to 20 seconds. Males may seek to thwart a mate’s attempted copulation with another bird by giving a fake alarm call, described as an irritable “ee-tee” or “keet”. Females retaliate by singing over their male’s song – jamming his signal and shutting him down – preventing him from advertising his prowess to other females.

Robert F Kennedy Jr once cut the penis off a road-killed raccoon in an incident that is just one of several involving dead animals that the controversial US health secretary has been involved in.

A new book called RFK Jr: The Fall and Rise was published this week and reveals a diary entry for Kennedy that describes the prominent vaccine critic and leader of the “Make America healthy again” (Maha) movement stopping his car on a New York highway on 11 November 2001.

“I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be,” Kennedy wrote in the journal.

He added: “My kids waited patiently in the car.”

Isabel Vincent, the author of the new book, told People that he took the raccoon’s genitals so he could “study them later”.

Kennedy has long had a fascination for animal bodies, especially those he finds dead which he sometimes collects and studies. Elsewhere in the book, the author notes that a journalist traveling with Kennedy in Long Island in 2001 reported that he was fascinated by dead seagull corpses.

“I’d like to pick up some of these dead seagulls for my skull collection,” the book quotes Kennedy as saying, though his schedule on the day did not allow him to pause his journey and harvest the bones.

There have been numerous stories involving Kennedy and his treatment of dead animals.

Environmental groups were outraged over a story which revealed the former presidential candidate once severed the head of a washed-up deceased whale with a chainsaw and strapped it to his car’s roof. He also once confessed to dumping a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park, attempting to make it look like the creature was killed by a bicyclist.

Previously unseen drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh that show the honey-loving bear before he was introduced to generations of readers in the 1926 book have come to light.

Two preliminary pencil sketches by E H Shepard have been shared for the first time by his family to mark the centenary of one of the most loved books in children’s literature.

Having been abandoned at the very earliest stage of the book’s creation, the drawings offer a rare glimpse into Shepard’s working process and imagination as he brought AA Milne’s character to life. They depict passages that are familiar to readers but were not accompanied by illustrations in the original published book.

A pencil drawing, captioned: “Climbing very cautiously up the stream”, shows Pooh and his adventure-loving friends Christopher Robin, Piglet and Owl. It was intended for Chapter VIII, in which Christopher Robin leads an “expotition” to the north pole.

In that passage, Milne wrote: “‘We are all going on an Expedition,’ said Christopher Robin, as he got up and brushed himself. ‘Thank you, Pooh.’

“‘Going on an Expotition?’ said Pooh eagerly. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been on one of those. Where are we going to on this Expotition?’

“‘Expedition, silly old Bear. It’s got an ‘x’ in it.’

“‘Oh!’ said Pooh. ‘I know.’ But he didn’t really.”

Another sketch that never made the final book is a delicate study for Chapter III, in which Pooh and Piglet go hunting and nearly catch a Woozle.

The drawings will be shown at Peter Harrington Rare Books in Dover Street, central London, as part of an exhibition that opens on 17 April.

Philip W Errington, a senior specialist at Peter Harrington, described the drawings as “very special”. He said: “[In] these preliminary sketches, Shepard’s putting these first thoughts on paper and there’s an absolute, vibrant creativity going on there.

“The skill that he’s got in rendering movement is really quite exceptional. The pencil marks across that page are really beautifully done. You’ve got the rapid creativity plus Shepard’s hallmark movement. These pieces really do leap off the page.”

He added: “It is extraordinarily rare to encounter preliminary drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh that capture what might be called the first moment of inspiration – the instant where Shepard is thinking through movement, character and narrative in pencil alone.”

He said of “Climbing very cautiously up the stream”: “You can see Christopher Robin at the front. [Pooh] is really very distinct and Piglet is beautifully done, but he’s got a little arrow at the bottom where he’s put ‘closer’. Perhaps he was having a bit of a problem with how those characters appear on the page. You’ve also got Kanga and Eeyore.”

Errington was an adviser to a 2017 Shepard exhibition staged by the Victoria and Albert Museum, to which the artist had bequeathed most of his preliminary drawings in 1969. “There are two types of drawing – the preliminary drawings, usually done in pencil, where he starts to create and play with the image and work out what is going to happen, and the finished drawings,” he said.