Teens came first at Australia’s world-leading Centre For Youth Literature – until it was axed
- Written by Bec Kavanagh, Senior Tutor in Publishing & Creative Writing, The University of Melbourne
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.
Authors: Bec Kavanagh, Senior Tutor in Publishing & Creative Writing, The University of Melbourne
