Last week, Marlee Jane Ward’s Welcome to Orphancorp was named the winner of the Prize for Writing for Young Adults as part of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Set during Mirii’s last few days at an industrial orphanage, this punchy genre-busting debut presents a dystopian vision of our nation that is terrifying in its familiarity and fascinating in its strangeness. Ward’s re-positioning of the Australia we know is of the best kind – considered and complex, alien yet still evoking that particular thrill of recognition for Australian readers.

These reimagined visions of Australia crop up again and again in our YA landscape – from Claire Zorn’s The Sky So Heavy (a realist depiction of life in a small community of the Blue Mountains during the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic nuclear event), to Thalia Kalkipsakis’ Lifespan of Starlight (a sci-fi, time-tripping debut set in Melbourne during the year 2084). I wouldn’t consider this a new trend either. As a teenager, I devoured John Marsden’s Tomorrow series (contemporary Australia is invaded by an unnamed foreign power), and I can still remember crying over Victor Kelleher’s Taronga (set in a post-apocalyptic Sydney). For me, the way these authors place their stories within an Australian context is what sets them apart from other similar stories – and what makes them so compelling.

I recently read Ambelin Kwaymullina’s sci-fi trilogy, The Tribe, which draws from the spiritual beliefs and cultural heritage of the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of Australia. While elements of the story sound like ones you’ve heard of before – authoritarian government, the threat of technology – the world she depicts is truly original. Think of a mash-up of X-Men and I, Robot, but with giant, highly intelligent lizards, ancient spirits and an emphasis on the Australian landscape. While I’d be one of the first readers to eschew an Australian fiction book that relies too heavily on descriptions of landscapes, by reimagining her home in a futuristic setting Kwaymullina reveals a new understanding of what landscape can mean.

Consider Justine Larbalestier’s Razorhurst which reimagines her own home of the past as a city filled with ghosts. There’s also Leanne Hall’s terrific This is Shyness, which gives us the surreal suburb of Shyness – a once-affluent suburban neighbourhood that is now engulfed in darkness. As with Kwaymullina’s world, these new renderings of the landscapes we are so familiar with make us see our own homes with different eyes. It’s a thrilling experience.

Perhaps more notably though, it seems authors use these new visions of Australia to talk about things that matter now. When describing her series, The Rosie Black Chronicles, author Lara Morgan wrote, ‘The creation of Gondwana Nation was my way of exploring a possible future for race relations in this country but to do it in a way that lead more down the path of self determination rather than assimilation.’ Or take New Zealand author Karen Healey’s When We Wake, which is set in Melbourne, Australia in the year 2127. Our heroine 16-year-old Tegan is the first person to be cryonically frozen and successfully revived, making her an instant celebrity. At first, people in the future seems better: they’re all vegetarians, her new friends tell her that racism is a sin of the past generations, and so on. But soon Tegan discovers some sinister secrets that changes the way she views this ‘new world’. There are many things a reader might take away from this development.

Time and time again, these stories appeal to the burgeoning sense of social justice that many teenagers are grappling with as they learn about the world around them, and leave the ‘black and white’ of childhood behind. These stories also show that teenagers have power despite the odds, and that change is possible, if not as simple as flicking a switch. The authors who situate their futuristic, magical and bizarre worlds in an Australian context have the potential to hold even more appeal for Australian teenagers. As author Emily Gale wrote in an article on our blog last year, these teens ‘…deserve access to the kind of YA that is brimming with ideas, observations and themes that are particular to their experience; the plot-steady, fine prose and originality of Australian YA’.

It is this ‘plot-steady fine prose and originality’ of Australian YA is what persuades me to return to these books, again and again. Though, I also love reading stories of teenagers. Like Sonya Hartnett who so skilfully portrays the particular intensity of the child’s gaze in a largely adult world through her novels (think Butterfly or Golden Boys), the best of YA can do the same for me now as an adult – reminding me what it felt like to be a teenager myself.

Bronte Coates