YA Day 2020

December 22, 2019December 22, 2019 The YA Room3 Comments

YA Day is back!

We’re thrilled to announce that our third annual YA Day will be on Saturday 14 March from 10am – 4pm at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne. Presented in partnership with Writers Victoria, YA Day 2020 will feature 10 incredible #LoveOzYA authors, merch stalls, and signing opportunities.

We’ll start off the day with discussions and signings, giving you close encounters with your favourite writers. Get your book signed, get your questions answered, get to know new-to-you authors with great new books!

Then, in the afternoon, we will split into two streams.

Want to write your own YA? We’ll have two 90-minute workshops: Will Kostakis on How to Build A Story and former publisher Kate Cuthbert on How to Get Your Story Out There.

Looking to interact with other readers? We’ll have four panel discussions, featuring your favourite authors talking about topics like ‘My Favourite (Fictional) Murder’, ‘Trash or Treasure?’, and a spirited discussion about which tropes are readable – and which are not.

The Writing Stream has limited spaces, so if you are interested, we encourage you to book early.

Get your tickets here!

Introverts’ Night Out

April 17, 2019 The YA RoomLeave a comment

Come along to Melbourne’s bookish pyjama party!

As introverts, we understand the struggle of going out sometimes, when all you really want to do is stay inside and finish reading your book. WE GET IT. But this is a night out just for us! Wear your pyjamas or a onesie (or something super comfy) and come to this night of YA fun with #LoveOzYA superstars Jodi McAlister, Astrid Scholte, and Michael Pryor.

Introverts’ Night Out is on Saturday 1 June from 6 – 8.30pm at the Library at the Dock (Docklands, Melbourne). Tickets are only $5! Book yours now so you don’t miss out on this bookish party for introverts (don’t worry, we love extroverts as well).

What’s involved?

Food!

Who doesn’t love some delicious snacks?! There’ll be cupcakes, sweets and savoury items. Dinner won’t be provided, but hey, don’t let anyone tell you you can’t eat cake for dinner. We totally support that.

Trivia!

Brush up on your YA general knowledge, because there’s going to be a ton of prizes up for grabs! Think you can name the lead actors from To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before? What about recall the trades from all thirteen districts in The Hunger Games? Glory could be yours!

An AMA (Ask Me Anything) panel with three #LoveOzYA authors!

Ever wondered what the weirdest thing in an author’s Google search history is? Or what about how they overcome barriers or plot holes in their writing? You’ll have the chance to pick these three authors’ brains on everything from which fictional characters they’d like to team up with during the zombie apocalypse, to what their publication journey was like, and even what they’re working on now.

Readings from the authors!

There’s nothing more soothing than having stories read aloud to you, is there? These three authors will be reading from their novels, and they might even do the voices as well. After all, it wouldn’t be a pyjama-themed bookish party without a bedtime story!

Book your ticket here.

Location Information

Introverts’ Night Out will be held at the Library at the Dock (107 Victoria Harbour Promenade, Docklands). The Library at the Dock is a 12 minute tram trip from the tram stop opposite Dymocks Melbourne on Collins Street (just near Swanson Street), or a 6 minute tram trip from Southern Cross Station on Collins Street. Hop on the number 11 or 48 tram and get off at the end of the line at Victoria Harbour Docklands. From there, the Library at the Dock is a 1 minute walk, right near the waterfront.

Upon arrival, please proceed to the rear entrance of the building, opposite a small park. If you’re arriving by tram, you can’t miss it. Doors will open at 5.45pm, and as this event is held after hours, there will be no access to the library prior to 5.45pm.

This event is wheelchair accessible.

About the authors…

Jodi McAlister

Jodi is an author and academic from Kiama, a seaside holiday town on the south coast of New South Wales. Her PhD was awarded by Macquarie University in 2015, and she is currently a lecturer in Writing and Literature at Deakin University in Melbourne. Her academic work focuses on the history of love, sex, women and girls, popular culture and fiction. It means that reading romance novels and watching The Bachelor is technically work for her.

You can find Jodi on Twitter at @JodiMcA, where she tweets regularly about her research, her writing, cool things she finds interesting, her hero worship of Kate Bush, and her slightly-too-intense passion for The Bold and the Beautiful. She is the author of Valentine, Ironheart and Misrule in the Valentine series.

Astrid Scholte

Raised on a diet of Spielberg, Lucas and Disney, Astrid knew she wanted to be surrounded by all things fantastical from a young age. She’s spent the last ten years working in film, animation and television as both an artist and manager. Career highlights include working on James Cameron’s Avatar, Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin and Happy Feet 2 by George Miller.

She’s a visual writer and aims to capture the vivid stories that play like movies in her head. When she’s not writing, she’s painting her favourite fictional characters and obliging her furry overlords, Lilo and Mickey. She lives in Melbourne.

Michael Pryor

Michael Pryor is one of Australia’s premier Science Fiction and Fantasy authors.

He has more than a million words in print, publishing more than thirty-five books and over fifty short stories.

Michael has been shortlisted seven times for the Aurealis Awards and seven of his books have been CBCA Notable Books.

For more on Michael and his books, go to http://www.michaelpryor.com.au.

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YA Day 2019

December 1, 2018 The YA RoomLeave a comment

YA Day is back in 2019! We’re thrilled to announce that the event will take place on Saturday 9th February from 10am – 4pm at the Wheeler Centre, in partnership with Writers Victoria. With five epic panels and fifteen incredible authors, it’s going to be an unmissable day.

Book your tickets here.

From the queen of creeps, Sarah Epstein, the fantastic Fleur Ferris, and Adult and YA author Anna Snoekstra, find out how to give readers nightmares in the best possible way.

Sarah Epstein is an author, illustrator and designer who grew up in suburban Sydney and now lives in Melbourne with her husband, two sons and a doggo called Luna.

After achieving a design degree and enjoying a 25-year graphic design career, Sarah returned to her first loves of writing and illustrating. Her debut novel Small Spaces, a YA psychological thriller, was shortlisted for The Readings Young Adult Book Prize.

Fleur Ferris spent sixteen years working in Police and Ambulance Services in Victoria and South Australia before her debut, Risk, was published by Penguin Random House Australia in 2015. Risk was nominated and won numerous awards, was published internationally and became an Australian Top 10 Bestseller. Risk was adapted to stage by a secondary school in Sweden and that adaptation, Risk: the play, is licensed and available to schools and drama clubs. Fleur’s second book, Black, came out in 2016 and quickly became Australia’s number one bestselling YA “new release” of 2016 and was optioned for film. Wreck, Fleur’s third crime thriller for young adults, was released in 2017. Found, another action thriller, will be released in July, 2018. Fleur has recently undertaken studies in screenwriting, is co-writing the screenplay adaptation of Black and is working on her next novel which will be released in July 2019.

Anna Snoekstra was born in Canberra, Australia to two civil servants. At the age of seventeen, she decided to avoid a full-time job and a steady wage to move to Melbourne and become a writer. She studied Creative Writing and Cinema at The University of Melbourne, followed by Screenwriting at RMIT University.

After finishing university, Anna wrote for independent films and fringe theatre and directed music videos. During this time, she worked as a cheesemonger, a waitress, a Christmas elf, a nanny, a receptionist, a cinema attendant and a film reviewer.

Anna now writes novels, teaches storytelling at RMIT University and Co-ordinates the Write Club at 100 Story Building. Her non-fiction has appeared in The Guardian, Filmme Fatales and she is a regular contributor to Lindsay. Her first novel Only Daughter was released in 2016, and is currently in the works to be turned into a feature film with Universal Pictures. Her second, the acclaimed Little Secrets, was released in 2017. Her first novel for Young Adults, the best selling Mercy Point, is out now.Read More »

Ask About… YA Publishing Event

November 1, 2018November 7, 2018 The YA RoomLeave a comment

Attention all aspiring novelists! Do you dream of one day seeing your novel in a bookstore, in a library, or being read by a total stranger at a train station? Do you sweat tears and blood working night and day, drafting WIP after WIP? Or perhaps you are busy polishing off your final draft like the undiscovered diamond it is. Perhaps, you have a manuscript ready to go!

The publishing industry can be daunting to navigate. It is easy to be uncertain of where to go or what to do next. Here, at the YA Room, we are proud to announce a very exciting opportunity – Ask About… YA Publishing. Join us on the 15 November at The Wheeler Centre to gain some pro-tips from Shivaun Plozza, author of Tin Heart, and Michelle Madden, Commissioning Editor at Penguin Random House.

Don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity to gain firsthand insight into your future career! We cannot wait to see you all there!Read More »

Welcome to the New Era

October 14, 2018October 14, 2018 The YA RoomLeave a comment

It’s the start of a new chapter at The YA Room, and we can’t wait to go on this journey with you. Get ready for even cooler events, more content, and some new friends. We hope you love what we have in store for you!

And with this new era, we’ve decided to expand our YA family! Get to know our two new co-hosts below, and come along to our upcoming Book Meets and events to meet them in person! We’re so excited for you to meet our new friends.

PRODUCT COLLABORATION REVEAL

August 23, 2018August 23, 2018 The YA RoomLeave a comment

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve teamed up with Nook & Burrow to create three new products that allow you to have a tiny piece of The YA Room in your very own home!

We’ve been working together over the past few months to create two soy wax candles and a recycled, handmade bookmark. We’re so excited to finally share these products with you, and we hope you love them as much as we do.

Grab your candle and bookmark today from Nook & Burrow and receive 15% off when you use the code YAROOM15 at the checkout! Happy shopping.

AFTER THE LIGHTS GO OUT Launch

August 3, 2018 The YA RoomLeave a comment

Last night, we were lucky enough to attend the launch of Lili Wilkinson’s latest #LoveOzYA novel, After the Lights Go Out! After our Blogger Brunch with Lili last Sunday, we were excited to officially congratulate her on her new release and eat some delicious cake with all of our favourite people. Kudos to Jess from @cakeandmadness for another incredible creation that tasted as good as it looked!

It’s not difficult to realise that Lili Wilkinson is such a key part of the #LoveOzYA community, with the packed house and a signing line that was almost out of the Readings Kids’ door. We’re so thrilled that After the Lights Go Out is now out in the wild, and we urge everyone to go and grab a copy of this phenomenal novel!

As always, we had a lot of fun filming a vlog of the night. You can check out everything that happened (including all our cake reactions) right here! Thanks to Lili Wilkinson, Amie Kaufman, and Readings Kids for the incredible night we had.

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In conversation with Anna Snoekstra

July 19, 2018July 19, 2018 The YA RoomLeave a comment

On Saturday 7th of July, we were invited to be in conversation with our latest #loveozya member, Anna Snoekstra, to celebrate the launch of her debut young adult novel, Mercy Point. The launch was held at the lovely Readings Kids in Lygon Street, with plenty of gorgeous refreshments including the much loved cupcakes created by Jess from cakeandmadness.

Mercy Point was selected by you guys over on our twitter to be our July book of the month, and we couldn’t have selected a more thrilling book. It’s amazing to see so much support for our Aussie authors, so we love when they pull through and win our polls, especially since we’ve been seeing how much our bookclub members have been enjoying.

Anna was super lovely, as you would expect from a crime writing novelist. Previously, Anna has published two adult fiction novels, Only Daughter and Little Secrets, and we were lucky enough to hear her talk on a panel when were up at Clunes Booktown Fest. We’ve included the blurb of Mercy Point and a few images down below from the event!Read More »

Top Ten Unmissable Events at #MWF18

July 18, 2018July 26, 2018 The YA RoomLeave a comment

With the official launch of this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival program last night, we’ve received a timely reminder of how quickly this epic festival has been creeping up on us. In a night that started the conversations about life and death, which pose as the overarching themes of this year’s program, those who were lucky enough to attend the launch were the first to hear about what’s happening this season. And wow, do these folks have an exciting festival planned!

With events from a ‘choose your own adventure’-style tour though a graveyard to a memorial service for dead pets, the Melbourne Writers Festival for 2018 is pushing the boundaries on what has been explored in the past, and the existing magic of MWF is getting an extra layer of awesomeness. As well as the traditional panels and in conversation panels, there’s also events such a high tea with Alice Pung at the Melbourne Star Observation Wheel, a spoken word cabaret inspired by Kurt Cobain’s masterworks, and authors eulogising their careers.

But in order to make searching through the program for the sessions right for you easier, we decided to share our top ten unmissable events at this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival. This program truly does have something for everyone. Push the boundaries of the conventional. Try something new. Experience something unheard of. Be a part of the conversations surrounding life and death at the 2018 Melbourne Writers Festival.

Ask… about YA Publishing

July 10, 2018 The YA RoomLeave a comment

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve partnered with Writers Victoria to bring to you a very exciting event about YA publishing with #LoveOzYA author Shivaun Plozza and publisher Michelle Madden!

If you write YA, are an aspiring author, or just want to learn more about the publishing industry, this event is for you. Come along to hear all about Shivaun’s road to publication, learn about the current state of YA publishing in Australia, and gain behind-the-scenes insight into what publishers look for in a manuscript.

Book your tickets now to come along to this 1.5 hour session on Thursday 15 November from 6 – 7.30pm!

About Shivaun Plozza

Shivaun Plozza is the author of ‘Frankie’ (2016) and ‘Tin Heart’ (2018). She’s also been published in anthologies and journals, and works as a freelance editor and manuscript assessor.

About Michelle Madden

Michelle Madden has been a Commissioning Editor at Penguin Random House since 2002. Penguin Random House is an international home to nearly 250 editorially and creatively independent publishing imprints. Michelle’s list covers fiction and non-fiction, including YA and adult cross-over, speculative fiction, middle-reader fiction (in particular series fiction), picture books, verse novels and illustrated fiction and non-fiction for children.

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