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And the Winner Is …

Gabrielle Tozer

And the Winner Is …

October 14, 2015 by Sheree 2 Comments

… Young Adult books!

Though the literary world seems abuzz with Man Booker fever over a novel that sounds like Stephen Hawking meets Psycho, the #LoveOzYA community is celebrating the winners of the Inky Awards. (I’m sure the MB prize winner is a great book; I’m just excited by the Inkies.) If you haven’t heard of the Inkies, don’t despair. Once upon a time no one had heard of the Man Booker Prize either – or the Oscars.

The Inky Awards are bestowed through The Centre for Youth Literature, State Library of Victoria, who promote reading as “not just something that is done as school work” and “an active, pleasurable and essential activity for all young people”. One of their projects is Inside a Dog, a website which promotes young adult literature, showcasing both Australian writers and their work and the cream of international YA literature.

Why “Inside a Dog”? It comes from a Groucho Marx quote:

insideadog-small“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.”

The name of the award comes from the Inside a Dog mascot, Inky, the all-round wonder-dog. The Gold Inky is awarded to a book by an Australian author while the Silver Inky is awarded to a book by an international author.

So, who are the winners for 2015?

The Gold Inky winner is:

Gold_winner_nobkgnd_1 9780732297053

The Intern,

by Gabrielle Tozer

 

 

The Intern is great book, a contemporary story of a girl in her first year of university who is pushed out of her comfort zone by an internship at a fashion magazine as part of her course requirement. You can read my review of The Intern here. Congratulations Gabrielle!

The Silver Inky winner is:

Fangirl_Pan Macmillan_0_1.previewSilver_winner_nobkgnd_0

Fangirl

by Rainbow Rowell

 

 

I haven’t read Fangirl yet but it’s on my list, and this has bumped it up quite a few places.

A quick look at the long list for this years awards shows the calibre of books that were in the running for the Inky Awards this year.

2015-Inky-longlist

Though I’ve only reviewed Clariel by Garth Nix, the quality of books is amazing. It’s impossible to keep up with all the excellent YA being produced as well as Australian speculative fiction – and that’s great news for everybody.

Links

Inside a Dog Homepage

The process of nomination and judging the Inky Awards plus previous Long Lists, Short Lists and Winners, here

Gabrielle Tozer’s website

Rainbow Rowell’s website

Man Booker Prize 2015 Announcement

 

Posted in: Aussie books, Aussie setting, Australian Women Writers, Awards, Contemporary, Opinion, Young Adult Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2015, #LoveOzYA, Aussie setting, Awards, Books, Contemporary, Gabrielle Tozer, Inky, Rainbow Rowell

The Intern, by Gabrielle Tozer

August 10, 2015 by Sheree 1 Comment

When I first heard this title my interest was piqued because I thought it was about a young doctor. Shows where my preconceptions come from.

9780732297053I soon found out it actually follows Josie, a first year journalism student who lands an internship with a fashion magazine.

The character of Josie had me hooked from the first page, moaning over her tiny bust in thesaurus-like list of euphemisms. Academic, ambitious, but with the fashion sense of a dairy cow and a tendency to embarrass herself, she isn’t happy that her mandatory internship is with a fashion magazine rather than a ‘serious’ publication. Without any choice, though, she throws herself into the one-day-a-week job with help from her oh-so-cool younger sister, Kat, to make sure she looks the part. Kat, the fashionista, is envious:

In her world, my inability to use a curling iron meant
I didn’t deserve the intern position.

At the job she’s faced with two other interns and a challenge; the best intern at the end of twelve weeks will win their own column in the magazine, complete with by-line and headshot, plus five thousand dollars. Josie, her mum and her sister have been doing it tough since her dad left, and that five thousand would go a long way.

Josie is a heroine who is smart and capable, but suffers from all the fears and lack of confidence a ‘not cool’ young woman would endure when she’s thrust into a unfamiliar world. She’s determined to make the most of her opportunities, but sometimes doesn’t realise what’s going wrong until it’s too late. What’s important about Josie, though, is that she doesn’t give up. She goes back and gives it the best shot she has, and ultimately that’s what counts.

Magazine

Image: Alex LaSpisa, Link: Flickr

There are a cast of interesting characters around her, most notably her popular, self-absorbed younger sister, and James, the flatmate of her cousin, where she stays the night when she works at the magazine, as she lives too far out of the city to commute. James provides the love interest – with the added complication that he turns out to have a girlfriend.

Having been a writer for many girls/women magazines, Gabrielle Tozer obviously knows how they tick and provides a believable setting without giving approval or judgement. The staff of the magazine have the usual mix that occur in any workplace; the generous and kindhearted, the bitchy and brash, and gradations in between. In other words, they’re human.

Tozer’s prose is engaging and witty. The story is told in first person with Josie narrating, and her personality and humour do all the work. In an early conversation with James, she’s trying to think of an answer when he asks about her most humiliating childhood incident. She thinks, both with humour and poignancy,

My life was an ongoing series of humiliating incidents wrapped
in a box of shame and tied with a bow of awkwardness.

It’s an easy read, but that doesn’t mean its light on the emotions. If you’re a teenager starting to do new things, or you remember what it was like going out of your comfort zone, you’ll identify with this.

The Intern has a sequel, Faking It, which chronicles the further adventures of Josie, and Gabrielle will have a new contemporary book (not about Josie) out in 2017.

Details:
The Intern by Gabrielle Tozer
Harper Collins
ISBN: 9780732297053
Published: Feb 2014

Links:
Gabrielle Tozer’s website

Aussie-Author-Challenge-2015-300x264 50Aussie Author Challenge

 

Australian Women Writers Challengeawwsml-2015

Posted in: Aussie books, Aussie setting, Australian Women Writers, Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2015, #LoveOzYA, Aussie setting, Book review, Books, Gabrielle Tozer, Review, Romance, Young Adult

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