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Notes

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Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2021

winner y separately published work icon The End of the World Is Bigger Than Love Davina Bell , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2020 17949370 2020 single work novel young adult

'IDENTICAL twin sisters Summer and Winter live alone on a remote island, sheltered from a destroyed world. They survive on rations stockpiled by their father and spend their days deep in their mother’s collection of classic literature—until a mysterious stranger upends their carefully constructed reality.

'At first, Edward is a welcome distraction. But who is he really, and why has he come? As love blooms and the world stops spinning, the secrets of the girls’ past begin to unravel and escape is the only option.

'A sumptuously written novel of love and grief; of sisterly affection and the ultimate sacrifice; of technological progress and climate catastrophe; of an enigmatic bear and a talking whale—The End of the World Is Bigger than Love is unlike anything you’ve read before.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2020

winner 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: 2019

winner 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

winner y separately published work icon Take Three Girls Cath Crowley , Simmone Howell , Fiona Wood , Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2017 11545468 2017 single work novel young adult

'Kate, a quiet boarder, making some risky choices to pursue the experimental music she loves.

'Clem, shrugging off her old swim-team persona, exploring her first sexual relationship, and trying to keep her annoying twin, Iris, at arm's length.

'Ady, grappling with a chaotic family, and wondering who her real friends are; she's not the confident A-lister she appears to be.

'When St Hilda's establishes a Year 10 Wellness Program in response to the era of cyber-bullying, the three girls are thrown together and an unlikely friendship is sparked. One thing they have in common: each is targeted by PSST, a site devoted to gossip and slander that must have a source within St Hilda's.

Who can you trust when rumour is the new truth?' (Publication Summary)

Year: 2017

winner y separately published work icon One Would Think the Deep Claire Zorn , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2016 9156049 2016 single work novel young adult

'Sam stared at the picture of the boy about to be tipped off the edge of the world: the crushing weight of water about to pummel him. Sam knew that moment exactly, the disbelief that what was about to happen could even be possible. The intake of breath before the flood.

'Sam has always had things going on in his head that no one else understands, even his mum. And now she's dead, it's worse than ever.

'With nothing but his skateboard and a few belongings in a garbage bag, Sam goes to live with the strangers his mum cut ties with seven years ago: Aunty Lorraine and his cousins Shane and Minty.

'Despite the suspicion and hostility emanating from their fibro shack, Sam reverts to his childhood habit of following Minty around and is soon surfing with Minty to cut through the static fuzz in his head. But as the days slowly meld into one another, and ghosts from the past reappear, Sam has to make the ultimate decision ...... will he sink or will he swim.' (Publication summary)

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