‘The Year Ahead in Youth Literature’ is a mouth-watering event showcasing the following year’s young adult highlights and hosted by a tireless organisation known as the Centre For Youth Literature (CYL).

Publishers come armed with a 1-minute spiel on their selected titles and anyone who’s interested is invited to come along and take notes. The audience is largely made up of bloggers, teachers, teacher-librarians, authors and publishers, but I also met a young guy who works in a bank, happens to love YA fiction and thought it sounded like a good way to spend an evening. And I thought hell-yeah to that.

It’s been nigh-on impossible to whittle the evening’s presentation down to my top titles but apparently I can’t keep you here all day… So here is part one which features, in brief, 13 titles from Australian authors.

A Small Madness by Dianne Touchell (late January)

The only one on the list I’ve already had the chance to read – about a teenage couple dealing with accidental pregnancy – delivers consistently dazzling prose and brilliant characters that stay with you.

The Flywheel by Erin Gough (February)

This first-love story, with a queer main character, isn’t a coming-out book. If you’re not sure why Australian YA needs more books like this, I refer you to Danielle Binks’ article on the subject, ‘We Read To Know We Are Not Alone’, which was published on the Kill Your Darlings blog.

The Guy, The Girl, The Artist and His Ex by Gabrielle Williams (April)

I was a big fan of The Reluctant Hallelujah by the same author and this sounds like a similar kind of offbeat comedy, set in Melbourne, about four teens who are thrown together because of a missing painting (Picasso’s 'The Weeping Woman’).

A Single Stone by Meg McKinlay (May)

14-year-old Rowan lives in a village that’s situated in such a harsh mountain landscape, it’s forgotten by the rest of the world. Survival depends on minerals mined by the smallest of girls. The book’s beautiful cover gave me goosebumps.

You’re The Kind Of Girl I Write Songs About by Daniel Herborn (May)

Humour, music and romance set in Sydney’s inner west – sounds like a good way to balance some of the hard-hitting issues books we’ll be reading next year.

Footy Dreaming by Michael Hyde (May)

I might not understand all the footy bits but that didn’t stop me enjoying The Whole Of My World (see further down), and this story also tackles racism.

Frankie and Joely by Nova Weetman (May)

The author’s second book sounds like a very intense story, set over two weeks, about female friendship and rivalry. Her debut was this year’s very enjoyable The Haunting of Lily Frost.

One True Thing by Nicole Hayes (May)

When I heard the summary of this one I thought of Rodger Corser’s teenage daughter in the TV series, Party Tricks. That made up my mind for me, along with the author’s debut novel about a girl’s passion for AFL – The Whole Of My World.

Freedom Ride by Sue Lawson (July)

YA novels are a brilliant entry point into Australian history for young people (and not-so-young: there’s often new information for me too). This one is based on true events that took place around the time of the 1965 Freedom Ride through western New South Wales which drew attention to the racism in many small towns.

Risk by Fleur Ferris (July)

I’m drawn to this because of the author’s fascinating past as an undercover cop. It’s about teens who meet a guy in a chat room, and then one of them goes missing. It reminded me a little of Cry Blue Murder which is a very tense page-turner about the perils of the internet.

Cloudwish by Fiona Wood

Although I’m not usually loyal enough for series fiction, I love overlapping characters (see Jaclyn Moriarty’s Ashbury/Brookfield books). So far all I know about Cloudwish is that there are some overlapping characters with Wildlife and Six Impossible Things, both of which I recommend frequently.

The Singing Bones by Shaun Tan

I think the entire audience made ‘ooooh’ sounds about this one, myself included. It will contain 50 photographs of Tan’s sculptures, inspired by Grimm’s Fairytales (one sculpture is pictured here).

How To Be Happy by Dave Burton (September)

This memoir won the Text Prize, which has given us some very good authors over the last few years. The 24-year-old author tackles depression, friendship, sexual confusion, academic pressure, love and self-discovery. And they say it’s funny, too!

Stay tuned for part two (featuring titles from international authors) which will be released in the coming weeks!