AustLit logo

AustLit

Writing
Subcategory of IBBY Honour Diploma
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2022

y separately published work icon This is How We Change the Ending Vikki Wakefield , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2019 16863784 2019 single work novel young adult

'I have questions I’ve never asked. Worries I’ve never shared. Thoughts that circle and collide and die screaming because they never make it outside my head. Stuff like that, if you let it go—it’s a survival risk.

'Sixteen-year-old Nate McKee is doing his best to be invisible. He’s worried about a lot of things—how his dad treats Nance and his twin half-brothers; the hydro crop in his bedroom; his reckless friend, Merrick.

'Nate hangs out at the local youth centre and fills his notebooks with things he can’t say. But when some of his pages are stolen, and his words are graffitied at the centre, Nate realises he has allies. He might be able to make a difference, change his life, and claim his future. Or can he?

'This is How We Change the Ending is raw and real, funny and heartbreaking—a story about what it takes to fight back when you’re not a hero.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2020

recipient y separately published work icon Between Us Clare Atkins , Collingwood : Black Inc. , 2018 12259282 2018 single work novel young adult

'Is it possible for two very different teenagers to fall in love despite high barbed-wire fences and a political wilderness between them?

'Anahita is passionate, curious and determined. She is also an Iranian asylum seeker who is only allowed out of detention to attend school. On weekdays, during school hours, she can be a ‘regular Australian girl’.

'Jono needs the distraction of an infatuation. In the past year his mum has walked out, he’s been dumped and his sister has moved away. Lost and depressed, Jono feels as if he’s been left behind with his Vietnamese single father, Kenny.

'Kenny is struggling to work out the rules in his new job; he recently started work as a guard at the Wickham Point Detention Centre. He tells Anahita to look out for Jono at school, but quickly comes to regret this, spiraling into suspicion and mistrust. Who is this girl, really? What is her story? Is she a genuine refugee or a queue jumper? As Jono and Anahita grow closer, Kenny starts snooping behind the scenes…'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2018

y separately published work icon The Bone Sparrow Zana Fraillon , Sydney : Hachette Australia , 2016 9459824 2016 single work children's fiction children's

'Subhi's imagination is as big as the ocean and wise as the sky, but his world is much smaller: he's spent his whole life in an immigration detention centre. The Bone Sparrow is a powerful, heartbreaking, sometimes funny and ultimately uplifting hymn to freedom and love.

'Sometimes, at night, the dirt outside turns into a beautiful ocean. As red as the sun and as deep as the sky. I lie in my bed, Queeny's feet pushing up against my cheek, and listen to the waves lapping at the tent.

'Subhi is a refugee. Born in an Australian permanent detention centre after his mother fled the violence of a distant homeland, life behind the fences is all he has ever known. But as he grows, his imagination gets bigger too, until it is bursting at the limits of his world. The Night Sea brings him gifts, the faraway whales sing to him, and the birds tell their stories.

'The most vivid story of all, however, is the one that arrives one night in the form of Jimmie, a scruffy, impatient girl who appears from the other side of the wires, and brings a notebook written by the mother she lost. Unable to read it, she relies on Subhi to unravel her own family's love songs and tragedies.

'Subhi and Jimmie might both find a way to freedom, as their tales unfold. But not until each of them has been braver than ever before.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2016

y separately published work icon The Incredible Here and Now Felicity Castagna , Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2013 6177924 2013 single work novel young adult (taught in 1 units)

'Michael’s older brother dies at the beginning of the summer he turns 15, but as its title suggests The Incredible Here and Now is a tale of wonder, not of tragedy. Presented as a series of vignettes, in the tradition of Sandra Cisneros’ Young Adult classic The House on Mango Street, it tells of Michael’s coming of age in a year which brings him grief and romance; and of the place he lives in Western Sydney where ‘those who don’t know any better drive through the neighbourhood and lock their car doors’, and those who do, flourish in its mix of cultures. Through his perceptions, the reader becomes familiar with Michael’s community and its surroundings, the unsettled life of his family, the girl he meets at the local pool, the friends that gather in the McDonalds parking lot at night, the white Pontiac Trans Am that lights up his life like a magical talisman. Suitable for young readers from 14 years of age.' (Publisher's blurb)

Year: 2014

y separately published work icon The Golden Day Ursula Dubosarsky , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2011 Z1770097 2011 single work novel young adult mystery (taught in 6 units)

'"There were only eleven of them, like eleven sisters all the same age in a large family. Because it was such a very small class, they had a very small classroom, which was perched at the very top of the school - up four flights of stairs, up in the high sky, like a colony of little birds nesting on a cliff. 'Today, girls,' said Miss Renshaw, 'we shall go out into the beautiful Gardens and think about death."'

'In the Gardens they meet a poet. What follows is inexplicable, shocking, a scandal. What really happened that day? Is 'the truth' as elusive as it seems? And do the little girls know more than they are letting on?' (From the publisher's website.)

Works About this Award

Balancing Act Tony Davis , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: Australian Author , June vol. 43 no. 2 2011; (p. 24-26)
Most writers lead messy lives filled with myriad jobs that help pay the bills in between the time they send on writing. Tony Davis.
She Poems His Body i "Her implements cut", Lyn Reeves , 2010 single work poetry
— Appears in: Foam:e , no. 7 2010;
The Possums in The Book of Kells i "'A strange group of animals'. Mice perhaps,", P. R. Hay , 2010 single work poetry
— Appears in: Stylus Poetry Journal , January no. 36 2010;
Song About Forever Peter Mitchell , 1986 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Great Unknown 1995; (p. 70)
To the Editor of the Monitor 'Horace Flaccus' , 1826 single work correspondence
— Appears in: The Monitor , 16 June vol. 1 no. 5 1826; (p. 35)
'Horace Flaccus', a free settler in the colony, declares to the Monitor's editor his availability for writing tragedy, sermons, poetry and other forms of literature - for a price. 'Flaccus' also offers some sonnets from his eldest daughter whom he describes as 'a promising Sappho'.
X