2010 Inkys Short List

Last year I was extremely fortunate to be a member of the Inky judging panel. The Inkys are the only Australian YA award to be awarded by the targeted audience - teens. Now you might be wondering how the heck I managed to manoeuvre my way onto the panel then - along with the Golden Inky winner from the previous year and four Aussie teen readers, I was chosen as the additional adult ring in. That panel reads ten international and ten Australian young adult literature releases deemed by the Centre of Youth Literature to be best for that year in publishing. The panel narrows it down, after copious discussion, to five international and five Australian titles. Then voting is opened up to teen readers on the Inside a Dog website.


This is the third year of the Inkys and some amazing winner have been deemed worthy in its short history. Today the shortlist was announced and the lucky but worthy few are as follows:

GOLD INKY - Australian

• Liar by Justine Larbalestier
• Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey
• Raw Blue by Kirsty Eager
• Swerve by Philip Gwynne
• Stolen by Lucy Christopher

SILVER INKY - International

• Going Bovine by Libba Bray
• Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
• Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
• Will Grayson, Will Grayson by David Levithan & John Green
• The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

I was asked last night by a fellow Aussie who I thought would get a guernsey and I was pretty much on the ball. We both stated the same titles so I think we can both puff our chests with pride in our excellent YA eye :)

Good luck to the finalists and happy voting to the teens of Australia. Read many, choose well, vote here.

Congrats to the CYL for celebrating quality reads!