The Text Prize and the importance of young adults reading

Last night, I was very excited to receive this year's Text Prize for Young Adult and Children's Literature (cue for big excited screams) for my manuscript The Book of Whispers. It was a lovely evening, and wonderful to meet so many of the people at Text Publishing who seem like a great team. I had to give a speech (cue for shaking knees) and this is what I said (well, kinda... this is what I planned on saying, I added some bits as well, that due to nerves, I don't remember!): 

Thanks so much  to everyone at Text Publishing for hosting this event and for offering this award for Young Adult and Children’s fiction. I’d like to acknowledge the other shortlisted writers whose manuscripts sound really exciting. 

The Text Prize has already produced so many outstanding books, across a fascinating variety of genres from memoir to tales of adolescent loss and learning how to cope. These stories  show how vibrant and exciting literature for children and young adults can be. 

The ideas for The Book of Whispers came to me while travelling through Turkey a couple of years ago. My two main characters are a young crusader knight and a girl who has been brought up in a convent. The Book of Whispers in the title refers to a locked medieval manuscript that only Luca can open and only Suzan can read. 

There are actual demons in my story and I hope they’re scary ones. Their need for suffering and pain gave me some chills while I was writing them. But I also wrote this novel  thinking about The Book of Whispers as a site of communication between people and between cultures.

I hoped that one day I’d be able to finish researching my story of a journey from Tuscany to Jerusalem by travelling through Syria. You just need to watch the news to realise why I’ve had to postpone that, but this brings me on to something else I wanted to say.

I’m a high school teacher as well as a writer and each of these practices reinforces to me the importance of literature for young people. Stories need to be valued because they build bridges between people. They let us imagine what it’s like to be another person. They let us experience lives that are not like ours. They build a capacity for emotional connection and empathy.

This is one reason why the Text Prize means so much to me.  I’m really excited and humbled to be following in the footsteps of the previous winners, and I think in creating stories that are – hopefully – enlightening  and understanding – we’re all doing something really important for today’s young readers.

So thank you.

 

The Text Prize shortlisting

Now, this is something that I'm excited about...

Text Prize

THE TEXT PRIZE FOR YOUNG ADULT & CHILDREN'S WRITING

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2015 SHORTLIST ANNOUNCEMENT

Awarded annually to the best manuscript written for young adults and children, the Text Prize has unearthed extraordinary, multi-award-winning novels and launched international publishing careers. The winner receives $10,000 and a publishing contract with Text Publishing.      

Four outstanding manuscripts have been selected from 268 entries to make up the shortlist for the $10,000 Text Prize, awarded annually to the best unpublished manuscript for teenagers and children.  

NEVERLAND by Margot McGovern

Margot McGovern is a freelance writer and reviewer who contributes to a number of leading literary publications. She is a former associate editor of Ride On magazine and lives in Perth.

AGATHA ABEL MEETS HER MAKER by Sophie Overett

Sophie Overett is a cultural producer and writer in Brisbane. She was a Young Writer in Residence at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre in 2014 and in 2015 is a Queensland Literary Fellow.

SOLSTICE by Mark Russell

Mark Russell is a writer whose work has appeared in publications including Inside Film and the Canberra Times. Solstice was originally written as a screenplay, which won a Screen Australia Development Grant in 2010. He lives in Melbourne.

THE BOOK OF WHISPERS by Kimberley Starr

Kimberley Starr is a teacher and author based in Melbourne. Her debut novel, The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies, won the 2003 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Best Emerging Author.

The winner of the 2015 Text Prize will be announced on Thursday 28 May at an event in Melbourne.

The 2014 winner, How to Be Happy by David Burton, will be published in September.

The Book of Whispers... author's notebook

A Young Adult manuscript I've been working on, The Book of Whispers, takes as is premise the idea that the First Crusade (year 1098) was inspired by demons who wanted to get a holy book of their own to Jerusalem. It tells the story of Luca,  a young Italian knight who is one of the only people who can see demons,  and Suzan,  who is the last speaker of the dying language the book is written in.

page from The Book of Whispers notebook

Readers often ask where writers gets their ideas from? The answer is everywhere--but a more interesting—well, to me, anyway—question is what do writers keep their ideas in?  The answer is, a notebook! It's not quite the same thing as a  journal. I have one of those, too, that I mainly write in when I'm traveling. But for each manuscript I have a notebook that's a book of ideas. The Book of Whispers has been created alongside my favourite ever notebook. I've got postcards and printouts and sketches pasted into a large soft Moleskin notebook,  along with notes about my research and ideas about settings and characters and plot and, for this novel, about the world of demons.

More than anything else I've written, this story required lots of fun research... I started with a trip to Turkey! And at home, I read about demons and medieval relics, and if course, the crusades! So I've posted a couple of pages from my notebook (many containing details I've subsequently changed or omitted... a notebook is always a work in progress).

page from The Book of Whispers notebook

 

The One with That Guy.

Prowling a Kyoto evening search of the world's best Indian food (where else would you go?)
On the way, I inadvertently became part of the entourage of Someone who clearly needs a capital S. You know-- Mr Celebrity. That Guy. Video and still cameras, long microphones on even longer poles, surrounded him -- and a cluster of men and women all far taller and younger than him who nodded excitedly when he paused and laughed uproariously when he spoke. He was walking my way, so they were all walking my way--I was walking our way; I was part of Them. 

I was walking down Kiyamachi Street, Kyoto, with That Guy. 

A woman walking the opposite direction clutched her partner's arm and looked excited enough to faint. That Guy was Brad Pitt, Leonardo Dicaprio, George Clooney maybe (except out of shape and short and wearing a baggy cricket jumper).You can't see his face in my photo. It probably doesn't matter.That Guy has a thousand faces. Ironic, really.

Oh yeah, the food wasn't that special, and I also saw the Golden Pagoda.

Breathtaking, really. Surrounded by squealing photographers. I could have been excited enough to faint.

Seriously, breathtaking.

Kyoto.What is the collective noun for butterflies?

Spent the day meandering through temples then on through the timber-housed, cobbled streets of Gion. First sight of a real life Geisha was like seeing Cinderella. Then I saw more and more of them, and the simpler but pretty style of dozens of ordinary Japanese girls in bright, pretty kimonos and sashes. Life must be strange for a geisha. Of course, no woman would go out dressed like that and not expect to be stared at. But on the streets of Gion, every few metres they are stopped by tourists for photos, and the geishas seem to freeze in time and space--the breeze itself seems to dart around them. The baubles in their hair, their marzipan-white faces and gem-bright kimonos give them the look of candied butterflies.

l googled it. The collective noun for butterflies is either a swarm or a flutter. I'll go with flutter. A flutter of kimonos. Kyoto is beautiful.

(Grrr at centred text, my software won't let me change the justification on my phone!  I'll fix it when I get home)

Takayama: a few lists about Japan.

I'm staying in a gorgeous riverside antique ryokan (small house hotel) run by a family that seems obsessed with antique things. There is a samurai suit of armour in the foyer downstairs along with shelves of old pottery and musty old books that look even more mysterious than normal locked up books because I wouldn't be able to read them, even with a key. Well, not that kind of key. As mysterious as street signs. 

Up a very steep set of stairs with a suitcase large enough to make the ryokan owners laugh to a surprisingly large room that is actually three rooms put together, with sliding paper doors between each and tatami mats in the floors. I wase served a lovely Japanese style dinner in one of these rooms, sitting on the floor at what looks like a large coffee table, while futons were rolled out on the floor in the next room and someone's baby cried loudly very close by as a reminder that this is reality, not an idyllic episode of Getaway.

Times I need to change my shoes in a ryokan (using a quick midday pitstop as an example): coming into the ryokan, going into my room, going out of my room, going into the toilets (there are shared slippers specially offered for that, with toilet slippers printed on them in gold foil like airport novel titles), coming out of the toilets, walking down the hall, going into my room, coming out of my room, walking down the stairs, preparing to leave the ryokan.

Hardest thing to find: an ATM , closely followed by accommodation that accepts Visa cards.

Strangest thing I've found in a bathroom: Not the electric toilet seats, not even the bathtub built to be used by an entire family all at the same time (and filled with water already used by the previous family!)but... the Aladdin's cave/ KingTut's tomb that doubles as a washroom and features a Samurai suit of armour complete with helmet and with plates sewn together with dark blue yarn that looks like shoelaces.  

Ordering coffee in Japan

I'm usually more tempted by shoes but I'm here in Japan because of an Air Asia on-sale impulse buy from way back in 2013. My flight left after midnight with a 'slight delay' for 'operational reasons' (Code for: we're not going to tell you) and I didn't preorder food (it isn't included in the fare) so wasn't irritated with interruptions while trying to doze. 

I was upgraded for our next leg--yay! So was in some comfort for the next delay, when the captain was very upfront about telling us why. A drunk man was refusing to leave his seat in the exit  row. The dispute lasted an hour. Security was called and succeeded in getting him to the door of the plane, where he continued arguing. I was tempted to do the heroic thing, leaping to my feet and pushing him out the door myself. 

Business class was nice although I still don't really understand why I couldn't have a coffee (there seemed to be 3 or 4 different reasons, all of which entailed pointing at photographs of coffee and nodding). But they were quite clear about why I couldn't have even a single beer. Perhaps it was the drunk refuser who decided for them. The bar was 'closed'.

Most amusing meal: ramen in the hotel cafe, that turned out to be linguine carbonara.

Most Lost in Translation moment: stewardess trying to explain why I couldn't have coffee.