Media Release

The Inkys - Teen Choice Book Awards Shortlist Announced

The shortlist of six youth literature books in the running for the second annual Inky Awards were published today on the State Library of Victoria’s youth reading website, Inside a Dog.

Voting opens today to determine the winners of the 2008 Inkys Awards – Australia’s only teen choice book awards, reflecting what teenagers want to read rather than what they are told to read. Votes are registered by readers online the Inkys voting page. Anyone under 20 from anywhere in the world can vote. The books with the most votes win.

There are two awards: the Golden Inky for an Australian book, and the Silver Inky for an International book.

The winner of the Golden Inky will receive a trophy and $2000 in prize money. The winner of the Silver Inky will receive a trophy.

This year a new award, the Inkys Creative Reading Prize, will be awarded to a reader who develops the best creative response to a book on the Inkys long-list. The response can come in any form be it short-stories, songs, poems or video – anything goes.

The Inky Awards were created by the State Library of Victoria’s Centre for Youth Literature to encourage reading for pleasure amongst teenagers. Last year more than 3,000 teenage readers voted for their favourite Inkys book. 

The winners of the Golden and Sliver Inkys and Creative Reading prize will be announced at the State Library of Victoria, Thursday 6 November 2008.

Note to editors:
insideadog.com.au is Australia’s best-loved website on books and reading for young people. Featuring competitions, reviews, a forum, excerpts from new titles, downloads and a monthly writer in residence, insideadog has a loyal and enthusiastic following – receiving over 500,000 visits in the last year. Insideadog is a project of the Centre for Youth Literature, State Library of Victoria, and is proudly supported by the Copyright Agency Limited and The Age.

Shortlist - 2008 Golden Inky

A Brief History of Montmaray
By Michelle Cooper
Random House Australia
Officially, the head of our household is Uncle John, who is Aunt Charlotte's brother and Veronica's father (and the King of Montmaray), but he's rather distracted on his good days, and downright alarming on his bad ones.

Town
By James Roy
University of Queensland Press
My brother Kimlan works all night fixing the road. He wears a shirt that reflects the light from the cars. The boss man says that if he does not wear that shirt, no one will be able to see him unless he smiles. I do not think he is being unkind when he says this. Maybe he has never seen anyone with skin that is like my brother’s.

Tales from Outer Suburbia
By Shaun Tan
Allen and Unwin
It's funny how these days, when every household has its own intercontinental ballistic missile, you hardly even think about them.

Shortlist - 2008 Silver Inky

Before I Die
By Jenny Downham
Random House
I sit up and switch on the bedside light. There's a pen, but no paper, so on the wall behind me I write, I want to feel the weight of a boy on top of me. Then I lie back down and look out at the sky. It's gone a funny colour - red and charcoal all at once, like the day is bleeding out.

Boy Toy
By Barry Lyga
Pan Macmillan
It was like watching the mating rituals of retarded birds, clumsily stepping the wrong patterns around each other over and over again. I sat to one side on a brittle office chair and tried not to be bored. 

Genesis
By Bernard Beckett
Text Publishing
…the only thing the population had to fear, was fear itself. The true danger humanity faced during this period was the shrinking of its own spirit.

For more information about the books see the Inky's shortlist page.

The Judges

The 2008 Inkys shortlist was determined by the following judges:

Simmone Howell, author of Notes from the Teenage Underground and winner of the 2007 Golden Inky
Andrew Finegan, librarian and comedian, NT
Gabriella, 16, from Adelaide
Aidan, 15, from Queensland
Luke, 14, from Wangaratta
Sarah, 18, from NSW.

Media inquiries:
Matthew van Hasselt
Media relations coordinator, State Library of Victoria
Ph: 03 8664 7263
Email: mvanhasselt@slv.vic.gov.au