20 books in contention for 2013 Inky Awards

The anticipated Inky Awards longlist of ten Australian books and ten international books was announced as the Centre for Youth Literature’s 2013 Reading Matters Conference drew to a close at the State Library of Victoria on Saturday.

The 20 longlisted books will be read and judged by a panel of six teen judges who were selected from 55 applications from acrossAustralia.

Inky Awards judges have two months to read all the titles on the longlist and select five Australian books for the Gold Inky Award shortlist and five international books for the Silver Inky Award shortlist.

The announcement of the shortlist will take place at a special event at Melbourne Writers Festival in August, which will then open the Inky Awards to a public vote, with teens voting for their favourite title via insideadog.com.au.

The Inky Awards were founded in 2007 by the Centre for Youth Literature and areAustralia’s first national awards for literature to be voted for by 12 to 20 year olds. The Awards will be tagged on social media using the hashtag #InkyAwards.

Centre for Youth Literature’s Program Coordinator, Adele Walsh explains, ‘We have twenty great books on the longlist, representing a diverse array of genres. The Inky Awards are unique inAustralia, as the winning books are chosen by the authors’ target audience – young people themselves. It is a great way to get teens involved and excited about reading, and it is great for the authors to get that kind of recognition.’

The winner of the Gold Inky Award winner receives $2,000 and will be announced at a special Inky Awards event in November.

The 2013 Inky Awards Longlist

Gold Inky (Australian books)
Fire in the Sea by Myke Bartlett (Text Publishing)
Girl Defective by Simmone Howell (Pan Macmillan)
My Life As An Alphabet by Barry Jonsberg (Allen & Unwin)
Cry Blue Murder by Kim Kane and Marion Roberts (UQP)
Life in Outer Space by Melissa Keil (Hardie Grant Egmont)
Tribe - the Interrogation of Ashala Wolf by Ambelin Kwaymullina (Walker Books)
Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix (Allen & Unwin)
City by James Roy (UQP)
Friday Brown by Vikki Wakefield (Text Publishing)
Wildlife by Fiona Wood (Pan Macmillan)

Silver Inky (International books)
The Diviners by Libba Bray (Allen and Unwin)
See You At Harry's by Jo Knowles (Walker Books)
Hostage Three byNickLake (Bloomsbury)
Every Day by David Levithan (Text Publishing)
The Originals by Cat Patrick (Hardie Grant Egmont)
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater (Scholastic)
This Is Not A Test by Courtney Summers (Pan Macmillan)
Drama by Raina Telgemeier (Scholastic)
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (Hardie Grant Egmont)
The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey (Penguin BooksAustralia)

-ENDS-

Further Information
The Centre for Youth Literature at the State Library of Victoria connects Australia’s young people with literature, inspiring young adults to engage with books, stories, writing and ideas. In addition to the Inky Awards, major projects include:

insideadog.com.au isAustralia’s best-loved website for books and reading for young people. Insideadog is a project of the Centre for Youth Literature and is proudly supported by the Australia Council and the State Government of Victoria.

Reading Matters, the country’s leading youth literature conference, began on Thursday 30 May with a stellar line-up of Australian and international authors leading three days of discussions, workshops and events about writing and publishing for young adult readers.