Jordi Kerr Interview

Interview a child and/or youth service librarian: 

Young people's book awards.

The State Library of Victoria, Centre for Youth Literature (CYL) Inky Awards.

  

In April I contacted Adele Walsh, CYL Program Coordinator by email, requesting the opportunity to interview her or her colleague Jordi Kerr in regards to the “Inky Awards”. Adele responded that Jordi coordinates the awards and that she would be happy to answer my questions, but due to time constraints an email interview would be preferable.

I then contacted Jordi and explained that I would posting the interview on my PD blog for Uni. 

Interview with Jordi Kerr

Learning Programs Officer, Centre for Youth Literature.  

Can you give me a brief history of the Inky Awards please?

 The Inky Awards were founded in 2007 as a program designed to engage and encourage teen readers. Research and reports, such as Young Australians Reading (2001) and the Scholastic Kids & Family Reading Report (2013, 2014) continually demonstrate the importance of peer recommendation and freedom of choice in inspiring young adults to read. This was the basis of the Centre for Youth Literature’s Inside a Dog website, and the Inky Awards developed from there.

The Inky Awards were the first award for young adult literature to recognise and reflect young adult opinions on a national scale. The Inky Awards are also unique in that they put Australian fiction at the forefront (the Gold Inky Award, with the Silver Inky Award for international titles), and the Awards focus only on young adult titles. Like Inside a Dog, the Awards are a space just for teenagers, who deserve to be considered separately to children.

Since 2007 the Awards have evolved and grown, to keep current with best-practice approaches to connecting young adults to reading, and to champion their voices and views. For example, in 2013 the panel of Inky Awards judges altered from being four teenagers and two adults (one of whom was the author who won the previous year’s Gold Inky Award), to six teenagers. Various events have also been run in conjunction with the Awards since 2011.

 Who is the CYL teen alumni, how are they chosen and what is their role? 

The teen alumni of the Centre for Youth Literature are the array of young adults that we have previously worked with through any of our programs – including past Inky Awards judges, and Inside a Dog’s You’re the Voice teen blogger program. For as long as the young adults are twenty years of age or younger, we continue to work with them.

The role of the teen alumni in the Inky Awards is to select the longlisted books (10 Australian books and 10 international books), using the titles that have been nominated for the Awards as the basis.

Do you have many teens apply to be a judge, how are they selected. How many teens participate in nominating the books for the longlist and in voting. 

Yes, we do! There’s some stiff competition for the role of Inky Awards judge, and it’s fantastic that there are so many young adults wanting to be reading ambassadors.

Judges have to submit an application (written or video recording) answering questions about their reading habits. A selection of applicants are then invited to an (online, video-chat) interview. We run the Inky Awards judging as a mentoring program for literary critics, and ultimately we are looking for that ability to read critically, and to share that with others in both a compelling and gracious manner. The selection of judges is also designed to reflect as many of the different reading interests of young adults as possible.

The nomination process is largely done by publishers, but nominations are hosted on the Inside a Dog site and are open to the public. Often when teens nominate a title, it sadly does not meet the eligibility criteria – young adults are keen to share the books they love, not in checking its publication date!

The Inky Awards teenaged judges (traditionally six) select the shortlisted books, and then young adults from around the world can vote for the winners through InsideaDog.com.au.

 What benefits or advantages do authors receive for being selected as a finalist and or winner of the awards?

 Longlisted authors receive the benefits of additional promotion and support by the Centre for Youth Literature. Inky Awards books reflect what teens want to read, and championing those views are a core aim of the Centre. There are libraries that ensure they purchase all the Inky Awards books, and there are schools that run their own internal Inky Awards book-judging programs!

Shortlisted authors have previously also been invited to take part in the Inky Awards Ceremony, where the winners are announced, at the State Library Victoria. The Centre for Youth Literature is a supporter of the literary community, and this is a paid appearance opportunity for authors.

The winner of the Gold Inky Award also receives a cash prize of $2,000.

 Do you think it’s necessary to raise the profile of the Inky Awards in the community more. If so how?

 We are always keen to grow awareness of the Inky Awards. They are the only national awards program that showcase the best new young adult fiction, as chosen by young adults. We get great feedback from librarians that they have a greater success rate when recommending Inky Awards books, and you can never have too much of that kind of reader engagement.

We know that there are significant literacy challenges in Australia, and we know that there are demonstrated links between reading for pleasure and building critical literacy skills.

This year we are hoping to partner with more organisations to get an Inky Awards poster into libraries across the country, at no expense to those libraries. We are also constantly working with media outlets where possible to champion the importance of the Inky Awards.

 How do you see the future of the Inky Awards evolving?  What does the advent of ebooks signify to the awards. 

 Hopefully bigger, better and brighter! The dream is for every library to be able to run an Inky Awards event or reading program. Building awareness takes time, though, and support. Disadvantaged schools don’t always have the money to buy new books. High visibility programs, like author events, require even greater levels funding. And the difficult part of working with young adults is that there’s a fairly high turnover of audience as they “age out”.

Ebooks have not yet had a significant impact on the awards. Research shows that the majority of young adults still read printed books rather than ebooks, and we’ve certainly found that the judges get particularly excited about physically receiving the twenty longlisted books. Certainly in the future the awards will evolve to working with electronic copies, if that is the direction the YA industry takes.