YA Book Stack VATE Podcasts

Robyn Dennison joins Emma for YA Book Stack to chat about her debut novel, Blind Spot. Blind Spot was shortlisted for the Text Prize in 2021. 'Intense' seems to be a fitting word to describe the novel but Blind Spot is not without moments of celebration and light. At its core, Blind Spot follows Dale, the male protagonist, who witnesses but doesn't intervene in the sexual assault of a girl from his school and the fall-out of his inaction as he grapples with why he didn't do anything. While this incident is the motivator for the narrative, the novel also provides the reader with warm and relaxed representations of queer relationships, positive demonstrations of consent and healthy relationships, and a cast of nuanced, dynamic, and complex characters.  In many respects, Blind Spot gives readers the opportunity and the script to explore difficult things "that hopefully don't happen, but maybe they have, or maybe they will."

For more about YA Book Stack visit the VATE website.

Please note: this episode of YA Book Stack discusses sexual violence, disordered eating, and substance use.

Robyn Dennison's fiction has appeared in Australian literary journals, including as a runner-up for the Overland VU Short Story Prize. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, where she teaches creative writing. Blind Spot, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Text Prize.

In the first YA Book Stack interview for 2023, Will Kostakis shares his inspiration for his new novel, We Could Be Something. The book is marketed as a ‘rollercoaster’ about two young men, each on their own journey of discovery. The novel is just that – a heartwarming, fun and funny read for high school students following the lives of two young people, two decades apart in Sydney's Darlinghurst. We Could Be Something sits on the cusp of students’ favourite genres – part coming-out story, part love story, part break-up story, and part family drama. Through the eyes of two characters, Harvey and Sotiris, the novel explores dreams, ambition, family and friendship, and how to manage the weight of possibilities when characters are standing on the edge of the rest of their lives. In this YA Book Stack interview, Will talks about his motivations for the text, including his thoughts on the spate of banning of LGBTQIA+ publications and his recent experiences during school visits, as well as the personal nature of his writing and the immense pride he feels for this publication.

For more on YA Book Stack visit the VATE website.

Will Kostakis is an award-winning author for young adults, best known for his contemporary novels The First Third and The Sidekicks. An advocate for young readers and writers, Will was awarded the 2020 Maurice Saxby Award by the School Library Association of New South Wales for his service to children’s and young adult literature. We Could Be Something is his latest novel.

Holden Sheppard's The Brink doesn't shy away from delving into material that is relevant to the lives of young people. From mental health, masculinity, family and friendships to sexuality and love, each page of the The Brink is laden with Holden's trademark gritty and honest depiction of the relationships and lives of young adults. In this YA Book Stack interview, Holden elaborates on some of the key ideas within The Brink, shares his writing motivations and his embodied creative writing process. Holden and Emma also discuss the important role of literature in ensuring authentic and accurate representation for young, same-sex attracted people and Holden responds to some of the critiques that his work is, simply put, too sexy for the classroom.

For more on YA Book Stack, visit the VATE website.

Note: there are two curse words in this episode that have been left in for creative flavour.

Holden Sheppard is an award-winning West Australian author. His debut novel, Invisible Boys (Fremantle Press, 2019), was published to both critical and commercial success. It won the WA Premier's Prize for an Emerging Writer, was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and was named as a Notable Book by the Children's Book Council of Australia. Holden's powerful second novel, The Brink, was published in 2022 by Text Publishing. Visit Holden here: https://www.holdensheppard.com/. 

Listen in to Emma and Malla Nunn’s chat about her new YA release, Sugar Town Queens. Set in South Africa against the backdrop of a community grappling with the last impacts of apartheid and deep economic disparity, watch the friendship between three fiercely independent and uniquely individual young women blossom. Sugar Town Queens celebrates what it means to be empowered when the odds are stacked against you, the power of 'Ubuntu' and the sweetness of first love. In this interview for YA Book Stack, Malla shares some of the struggles she had with writing the text, the importance of celebrating the human experience and how all of her stories are, at the very core, tales of identity. For more on YA Book Stack, visit https://www.vate.org.au/ya-book-stack.


Born and raised in Swaziland on the far edges of the British Empire, Malla Nunn attended a boarding school specially set up for 'mixed race' children. The students at the school spent their time learning the Bible, breaking the rules, and then lying about it. In common with most colonial institutions, stealing, fighting, and violence were commonplace. It was in this charged atmosphere that Nunn developed a fascination with bad behaviour, risk and punishment. After her family migrated to Australia to escape apartheid, Nunn graduated with a double degree in English and History and then earned a Master of Arts in Theater Studies from Villanova University. Faced with a life of chronic under-employment, she dabbled in acting and screenwriting. She wrote and directed three award-winning films, including Servant of the Ancestors, which won Best Documentary awards at film festivals in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Zanzibar, and was shown on national television in Australia. She married in a traditional Swazi ceremony. Her bride price was eighteen cows. She now lives and works in a weatherboard house with a tin roof and an olive tree in the garden in Sydney, Australia.

YA Book Stack is back for 2022! Poppy Nwosu, editor of the recently published horror tales anthology, Hometown Haunts: #LoveOzYA Horror Tales, joins Emma to traverse through what is scary and what makes a tale especially horrific. Emma (a scaredy-cat) and Poppy (a genre-fiction aficionado) hone in on some of their favourite stories from the publication; chatting about the ways in which these short stories could be used in the classroom to unpack theme, writing style, or even the power of graphic artistry. From fears about environmental damage, monsters that sneak up in the night, and spirits that haunt the land, Hometown Haunts unsettles the reader and leads them to realise that at the end of the day, we are all scared of something. For more on YA Book Stack, visit https://www.vate.org.au/ya-book-stack.


Poppy Nwosu is an author of young adult fiction. She has published three romantic contemporary novels called Making Friends with Alice Dyson (2019), Taking Down Evelyn Tait (2020), and Road Tripping with Pearl Nash (2021), and is the creator of the 2021 YA anthology Hometown Haunts: #LoveOzYA Horror Tales. Her work has been shortlisted for the SPN Book of the Year award, Adelaide festival Unpublished Manuscript Award and the Readings Young Adult Book Prize, and has been awarded the SA Writers Fellowship residency at Varuna Writers House, as well as an Arts SA grant. She has appeared at Adelaide Writers Week and Salisbury Writers Festival among others. Growing up surrounded by cane fields and rainforest, Poppy studied music at university before living overseas in Ireland. She is now based in Adelaide, Australia.

Peta Lyre is far from typical but she tries hard to appear so by following a series of well-crafted rules and routines dictated by her psychologist to assist with blending in. Through Peta Lyre’s Rating Normal’s stream-of-consciousness narrative, we accompany Peta as she navigates life seeking to be ‘normal’. As readers, we explore what it means to be normal, who and what is normal and ultimately, whether being normal is all that it is made out to be. With empathy and compassion, Whateley unveils what life is like for Peta who has multiple diagnoses and has undertaken years of therapy in order to assist with managing her triggers and we are asked to challenge the typical ‘rules’ of behaviour. Why would we want to be ‘normal’ and at what cost? In this interview for YA Book Stack, Whateley elaborates on the anxieties and uncertainties of living in a world that doesn’t suit how Peta’s mind works and shares the reasons for her many inspirations – from Frankenstein, to Romantic poetry, and Icelandic instrumentalist music.

Anna Whateley’s debut #ownvoices novel Peta Lyre’s Rating Normal is shortlisted for the CBCA book awards. She also has an essay titled ‘Noisy Silence’ in Growing Up Disabled in Australia, edited by Carly Findlay. Her next novel, Tearing Myself Together, will be released early 2022 with Allen & Unwin. When coronavirus spread, Anna founded the bookish chat show #AusChat just to keep the community together, and the YouTube channel is now funded in part by the Australian Arts Council. She uses her YouTube and Twitch presence to collaborate and connect with the writing community and more broadly with composers, gamers, and interesting folk all around the world. Anna has a PhD in young adult fiction (literary criticism) and has taught sociology and YA/children’s literature to preservice teachers. She loves to attend writer events, conferences, twitter storms, and book launches, and is also a strong advocate for the neurodivergent community.