In 2019, the State Library Victoria announced it was retiring the “brand” of its groundbreaking Centre for Youth Literature.
The centre ran – among other things – Australia’s first and only national teen-voted awards for teen literature, the Inkys; a lively online youth literature community; and a two-day program that brought together everyone from readers and authors to teachers to celebrate youth literature.
Then director of library services, Justine Hyde, told the Age the library was not “axing it and we’re not closing it, we’re simply changing the name”. But despite this, the library quietly retired these core programs. Five years later, amid controversy, they also retired their creative writing workshops, Teen Bootcamp, in which major authors like Nova Weetman and Jared Thomas worked with teens.
Founded in 1991 by educator and youth literature advocate Agnes Nieuwenhuizen as the Youth Literature Project, the centre’s absence is still widely felt. Award-winning author and former staffer at the centre, Lili Wilkinson, visits a lot of schools, where she says, teachers and librarians “regularly bemoan the loss of the centre”.
Zhana Maticevski-Shumack was a Year 12 student and on the centre’s advisory board when it closed. “The decision has been made for youth rather than with youth,” she wrote in 2019. “It’s our community and we deserve a say.”
And this, sadly, brings us back to the disappointing reality. That all too often, and despite national anxiety about Australia’s “reading slump”, when it comes to engaging teen readers, we’re still not giving them a say. Even though, experts say, getting teens involved in teen reading programs is vitally important.
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Ironically, the United Kingdom’s Booker Prize announced last year it would select three youth judges to help award a Children’s Booker Prize. Hailing the move, Australian agent and author Danielle Binks wrote: “children being invited to judge books in an award that is for them, and treating them (finally!) as equals within their own readership is good and brilliant” – pointing out that the now defunct Inkys had the idea first.
A spokesperson for the State Library told The Conversation it offers a range of programs for young people. Two of them are the Young Regional Writers program (which brings students and children’s authors together for a term of story writing and creativity) and Big Ideas for Young Minds (where students hear from Australian leaders in social change in online sessions).
Others include VCE talks and workshops, and partnerships such as the Victorian Premier’s Reading Challenge and Expression Australia (a not-for-profit organisation created by and for the Deaf community). “Our programs are often refreshed based on ongoing feedback from participants to ensure they remain contemporary and meet community expectations,” said the spokesperson.
But no other state had or has a Centre for Youth Literature, nor does Victoria now. And while there are other awards that recognise the creators of books for young adults, none are entirely selected by them.
An ‘incredibly important’ history
In 1999, the Youth Literature Project moved to the State Library, and was renamed the Centre for Youth Literature. At its peak, the centre reportedly had roughly three full-time equivalent staff.
Mike Shuttleworth, who joined the centre as program coordinator in 2002, remembers it operating as an independent arts organisation within a public service agency – as much as possible. “The Library saw us [as] a way to engage young audiences, which we massively did.”
For around two decades, it was the connective tissue that held Melbourne’s young adult (YA) reading community together. And it had national reach, running professional development, events and regional tours, as well as its core programs.
One of them was Inside a Dog, an online youth literature space where teen readers could start their own book club, share ideas, post reviews or show off fan art. The site boasted 60,000 users within the first six months. Teens were hungry to talk about books. Behind the scenes, reader development was carefully balanced with youth agency.
That commitment was epitomised in The Inky Awards, Australia’s first national teen choice award for young adult literature, launched in 2007.
Each year, a panel of teen judges from across Australia would select the shortlist. It was then put to a public vote by readers aged 12–20. The Gold Inky was awarded to an Australian author (with a A$2,000 prize), with the Silver Inky awarded to an international author. Winners included Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, and Lynette Noni.
Teens involved in the program described enormous personal and professional benefits to me. The opportunity gave them confidence and, for some, public speaking and hosting opportunities. At the Melbourne Writers Festival, teen Inky judges were mentored by Centre staff to interview authors like Rainbow Rowell on stage.
Luca F. judged the Inkys in 2018, when he was in Year 7. He told me the community was “incredibly important” to him and he “made friends with people who I wouldn’t otherwise have interacted with”.
The Reading Matters biennial conference, which ran for 12 years, was another core event. It happened for the last time in 2017.
Wilkinson worked at the Centre for Youth Literature between 2001 and 2003, where she curated Inside a Dog and the Inky Awards. She describes the experience of speaking at one of the last Teen Bootcamp events in 2023, and seeing, at the end, “trolleys of free books wheeled out for the teens to take home”.
“It only took a few seconds to realise that I was looking at the entire CYL collection that I used to maintain,” she told me. “A legacy of innovative programming, gone in an afternoon.”
Treating teens as tastemakers
These programs put young people to the front, respecting their opinions and creating spaces where their voices matter. “We treated teens as capable, thoughtful readers, and as tastemakers in their own right,” said Adele Walsh, who designed and evaluated the centre’s program and services from 2010 to 2017.
Showing teens respect shouldn’t be revolutionary, but there are increasingly limited spaces where this occurs. The centre upended the (false) assumption that YA books are just a stepping stone to “real” literature.
The kind of agency that was embedded in every level of the centre’s program is vital to getting teens reading. If we really want to combat the downward trend in young people’s recreational reading, we should take this seriously.
There are programs across Australia that celebrate young adult fiction. (Storyfest in Queensland; the Readings Teen Advisory Board; #LoveOzYA, who are currently exploring a revived Reading Matters conference and the Australian Children’s Laureate Foundation – though this is arguably directed more towards primary-aged readers.)
Sadly, while there have been conversations about rehousing the Inkys, they have never eventuated, due to the lack of funds and staff capacity. The Centre for Youth Literature had provided both.
No other organisation has combined advocacy, ambition and respect in quite the same way. Since the centre closed, many teens have found communities and formed clubs on Book Tok and other social media – but for under 16s, this has abruptly ended with social media ban. If ever we needed a reboot of the centre, it’s now.
The federal government is currently consulting for its National Cultural Policy, to shape the future of the creative and cultural sector. “Engaging the Audience” is one of its five pillars.
Despite our widespread anxiety about current literacy levels and reading rates, have we forgotten the person at the heart of these matters: the teen reader?
Now is the time to reflect on Nieuwenhuizen’s goal of championing these voices – and think about how to make a new space for them in today’s literary landscape. If adults want teens to read, we need to not just bring them back into the conversation – but let them lead it.
Bec Kavanagh worked on a short contract at the CYL in 2016, and in the past has worked on events with Lili Wilkinson, Mike Shuttleworth and Adele Walsh.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
