Audio transcript

Between the bookshelves – 4. Will Kostakis

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JADE ARNOLD: The Arts Unit recognises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples and storytellers of this place, now known as Australia. We are grateful for the continuing care of Country, waterways, and skies where we listen, read, and learn. From here on the lands of the Gadigal and Wangal peoples of the Eora nation, and from wherever you are listening, we respect the Elders of the past and present, and extend that respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening.

[theme music - Matt Ottley, 'Dance of the Jellyfish']

You're listening to 'Between the bookshelves', the official podcast of the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge. I'm your host, Jade Arnold, the Premier's Program Officer, Reading and Spelling, at the Arts Unit. Join me as I chat with children's and young adult authors and other experts in education and children's fiction as we talk about the books and the strategies that may spark or reignite a love of reading. Let's dive in!

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Welcome to episode 4 of 'Between the bookshelves'. I'm joined today by young adult author Will Kostakis. Will is the author of 'We Could Be Something', the 'Monuments' duology, 'The Sidekicks', 'The First Third', and junior fiction title 'Stuff Happens: Sean', all of which feature on the PRC book lists. Hi, Will. How are you today?

WILL KOSTAKIS: I'm very well, thanks. How are you?

JADE ARNOLD: Good. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me. So, Will, one of the key aims of the Premier's Reading Challenge, or the PRC, as we like to call it, is being able to connect with children and young adults with stories that they'll fall in love with. So, with that in mind, we'd like to do a little 'between the bookshelves' pitch instead of an elevator pitch to help teach librarians making recommendations for their students.

So, imagine, if you will, a student is standing between the bookshelves in their school, local library, or the bookshop, and they're in the K section, and they see your titles there on the shelves, maybe with a little PRC sticker on the spine of the book. And you've got to help them make that decision to take your book home. So, could you give us a 'between the bookshelves' pitch for your latest title, 'We Could Be Something', which features on the 9Plus book list, and what type of reader do you think it would appeal to?

WILL KOSTAKIS: I think 'We Could Be Something' will really appeal to that teenager who feels like they're aging out of young adult but aren't quite ready to dip their toe into an adult book. It's about 2 very different teenagers who are standing on the edge of the rest of their lives. And it is a big queer family coming of age story. I wanted to look at a family in a time of crisis, and then make a lot of jokes during that crisis and hopefully break the reader's heart and then sort of mend it a little bit and hopefully leave the reader a little bit more well equipped for the future that they're stepping into.

JADE ARNOLD: I think you've done that very well. There's definitely a lot of heartbreak, but there's a lot of laughter along the way. Now, this next question is going to be a little tricky for you to answer, because I don't want to spoil this for anyone listening who hasn't read this book, but this story is told from the perspective of 2 characters. You've got Harvey and Sotiris, and as the narrative unfolds, there's this lovely little twist around how their 2 lives interact. Can you talk us through why you chose to write 'We Could Be Something' in this way and what some of the challenges of taking this approach were.

WILL KOSTAKIS: Obviously, one of the big challenges is when you're an author, you spend so much time talking about the book, in fact, more time than you actually spend writing the book. And now I'm like, oh, I want talk about it, but I can't talk about it. So, that's one of the biggest challenges for me as the writer. But it's also one of the biggest rewards for the reader, because as a reader, working through the PRC when I was a kid, the books that really stuck with me are the ones that opened themselves up to me and that surprised me and that challenged me.

And so with 'We Could Be Something', I'm like, these 2 boys, their stories intersect in a really interesting way. I'm not going to tell you how. I want you to see when you figure it out, if you figure it out. There's no one big shocking moment where they intersect. Some people have picked it on page 5. Some people, look, let's face it, some of the adults who've read it don't pick it, and then they have to read it again. But most people get it around the middle.

And I really wanted to do that, because I wanted to make sure that the reader was active in constructing meaning. I was a big crime fiction fan growing up. And even though this is not a crime fiction text, it is a readerly text where the reader is invited in and really, really looking for clues and trying to figure out how the 2 characters meet.

JADE ARNOLD: And it's that really fun process of going back once you've figured it out, going back through the story in your head and thinking, oh, here are all the little breadcrumbs you left along the way to lead me to this point, which is really nice. But for any of our listeners thinking about picking up this book, I strongly recommend you avoid reading any reviews before you read it, because you will probably come across the spoiler of what we're trying to talk about. But it's a really great title to recommend to a student who's looking for something that will subvert their expectations, just like you were talking about.

But something that really stood out in 'We Could Be Something' was the depth of characters, their strengths and their imperfections, and how deeply tied they were to this little family-run Greek cafe and the apartment upstairs from it. How do you go about creating such rich characters, and where do you draw your inspiration from?

WILL KOSTAKIS: Where does Will, who grew up in a small cafe in Darlinghurst, draw his inspiration from? I don't know, just my mind. I'm just so creative. Look, I was fortunate enough to grow up in a small but potent Greek family. And this book, especially, I hate it when authors say this is the story of my heart, as if all my stories aren't the story of my heart. But this one especially.

I was writing 2 novels, one about growing up in my small but potent Greek family, and another about being a 17-year-old author and how challenging that was. And over the course of writing both of those books, they inched closer and closer together until they became one novel. And so, for me, the story started with my real life. And obviously, the first draft I wrote the mum character very much like my mum, the grandmother character very much like my grandmother, all the boy characters very much like me. And I tend to write a first draft like that.

And then with the second draft, I'm like, no, these are no longer characters that I know. And then they start to become fictional. They start to react differently to the people in my life. They start to develop different characteristics that the story actually needs. And by the third or fourth draft, there are little hints of the people that I know that inspired them, but they begin to serve the story. And so for me, that's my process. I start with the real, and then slowly but surely, it becomes something fictional.

JADE ARNOLD: So, I guess that's where this real down to earth grounding of realistic representation of people, because they've come from very real people, and then you tweak them and they take on this life of their own.

WILL KOSTAKIS: Yeah, 100%.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, that's awesome. 'We Could Be Something' won the 2024 Prime Minister's Literature Award in the young adult category, and the judges described it as 'a powerful novel with universal appeal, imbued with heart and wit, told with control and maturity'. What was it like receiving this award, and what do awards like the Prime Minister's Literature Award mean to authors?

WILL KOSTAKIS: Look, it was a terrible experience. I can't believe they did it to me.

JADE ARNOLD: You have to get up on stage.

WILL KOSTAKIS: I have made my whole brand around getting nominated for every award, but never winning, and now that I've won one, I am completely adrift. No look--

[laughs]

It meant a lot to me. Again, this is a book where those who read it, you will see that one of the most important people in my life, she is aging. And we are getting to the point now where we are saying goodbye. And I always want to share things with her. And I'm really grateful that this came at a point in my life where I got to share this with her. She is my overwhelming, overbearing great grandmother.

The last time I wrote a book that was heavily inspired by her was 'The First Third', and that was nominated for the same award. And I remember when I didn't win that award. The big disappointment came from, 'Oh, I really wanted to win this for her.' And so, getting to win it at a time when she is still with it enough to know, 'Hey, William won,' and it really, really meant a lot.

And look, awards don't really mean anything. Like they do, they're wonderful, I love them. But at the end of the day, you wake up the next day, you're still the same person. I am not suddenly famous. People aren't suddenly reading my books more than they were. But that little bit of validation, that helps more on the bad days.

Because I love being a writer. I love getting out to schools, meeting teenagers, empowering them to write. But at the same time, so much of my job is sitting alone at a desk thinking, oh, I hate this sentence. I know there is a good sentence in there somewhere, but I cannot figure it out. And there is so much doubt and so much just self-loathing that when you get an award like this, at least for a week, I was like, 'Oh, maybe I'm OK at this.'

JADE ARNOLD: Well, I'm very glad you were able to share that with your grandmother. That's very sweet and definitely worth checking it out. I think from my perspective at least, having those awards like that really showcase what authors are doing that are really unique and really powerful in that space. And I think certainly what we were trying to talk about without spoiling things earlier is probably contributing a lot to that. So, definitely worth checking it out.

Before we move on to your next book, let's come back to our 'between the bookshelves' chat. Let's say our teen reader is standing between the bookshelves after devouring 'We Could Be Something' and is after their next great read. What would you suggest they read next?

WILL KOSTAKIS: Well, if we're in the K section, I would nudge them towards, say, an Amy Kaufman book and go, 'Hey, you've read enough of me.'

[laughs]

But if you're looking at the K section and you're like, 'You know what, I want another Will Kostakis banger,' I would sit there and go, 'OK, but what did you like about "We Could Be Something"?' Because 'We Could Be Something', when I wrote it, I was like, 'I want this to feel like the greatest hits of everything I've learned from my career as an author.'

You've got the small but potent Greek family stuff. If that is what really, really got to you, then 'The First Third' is the obvious choice. And you will see the DNA of 'The First Third', a lot of that is in 'We Could Be Something'. If you liked the dueling voices, and you really enjoyed the interplay of the personal and queerness more brought to the fore, I would look at 'The Sidekicks'.

If you were like, 'Look, I liked "We Could Be Something", but nothing happened.' One, I would say you're wrong. Read it again. But 2, I would be like, 'OK, you would want something a little bit more plot driven.' And perhaps if you're somebody who is more drawn to fantasy, I would be like, 'OK, if you like that voice, you can get a little bit of the Greekness as well, and a lot of the interplay between the characters, but do that in a fantasy setting,' and you get 'Monuments' and its sequel, 'Rebel Gods'.

If you're like, 'I want a Will Kostakis novel, but I'm not committing to another 70,000 words,' then you just look at 'The Greatest Hit', which is a nice little novella, and you can bang that out in 2 nights.

JADE ARNOLD: Amazing. So, the next 2 books I'd like to talk about with you are 'Monuments' and 'Rebel Gods', which you've just mentioned. These are books 1 and 2 of the 'Monuments' duology, and they both feature on the 7 to 9 book list. How would you describe this to someone thinking about picking up the series, and what type of reader do you think it would appeal to?

WILL KOSTAKIS: 'Monuments' and 'Rebel Gods' are very much speaking to those readers who love, say, 'Percy Jackson', or who devour video games like 'The Legend of Zelda' and are like, 'You know what, I love this sort of lighter fantasy, but I wish it was set in Australia.' And so, that's what 'Monuments' is. Three teenagers skip school to find the ancient gods that are buried under different Sydney high schools. Then they accidentally kill those gods and absorb their powers.

And so, really fun. Still has a bit of the Will Kostakis emotional punch, but I was very aware of actually, no, I'm dialing up the funny on these, and I'm not trying to make you cry on every second page. That was really important to me. And the thing is, I wrote the first book and I was like, 'Oh, this is so escapist. This is so fun.' And I didn't realize how much I would need that until I was writing the sequel.

And 'Rebel Gods' was written during the initial COVID lockdown, so all my plans for the series I had to throw away. And it was like, 'OK, I can only walk 1 kilometre away from my house. Sweet. That is where this book is going to be set.' And so, it became a really intimate portrait of Redfern in Sydney, while 'Monuments' itself sprawls across.

JADE ARNOLD: All of greater Sydney.

WILL KOSTAKIS: Yes. And I wanted to look at what the world would be like if teenagers were suddenly empowered. What would they look to change? One of the big frustrations when I was a teenager was that you're coming into your own, and you're starting to notice the injustices, and you're starting to notice the things that adults accept about the world, all its little cruelties. And they're just like, 'Yeah, but that's just the way it is.' And if you were a teenager and you suddenly became a god, what would you do to try to change the world and how difficult would that be?

JADE ARNOLD: I really like that question. But what was it like writing a fantasy novel for the first time, and how did you find that writing process different from your other titles?

WILL KOSTAKIS: It was absolute hell. [laughs] Because for me, like I always say, 'If nothing happens in a scene, it's just 2 characters sitting down, I can find a way to make it interesting.' But characters suddenly have to do stuff and you have to keep the plot moving, suddenly I'm just like, 'I am not equipped for this. Oh, I'm writing a fight scene. Punch goes here.' I just am not equipped, and I was overthinking every single part.

And the thing was, the big fantasy books that I devoured are Terry Pratchett ones, and he's just sassing everything on every page. And the thing is you don't want the Marvel-ification of the voice, where if you're watching a Marvel movie and they see the bad guy and they're just like, 'Oh, this is happening now, I guess, ha ha ha.' And it defuses all the tension. And so for me, if I was too sassy on the page, it would defuse tension. If I was too funny, it would defuse tension. So, I had to find a way to balance building stakes with having a solid laugh. And I didn't want to take myself too seriously.

That was a huge challenge for me, but it taught me so much about, one, writing to deadline as well, because it was my first 2-book deal where it was like, 'No, this is when you have to deliver your next book. There is no wiggle room here. Yes, there's been a pandemic, but guess what? No wiggle room. You have to deliver something.'

Absolutely frightening. And so, it really taught me to write under the pump and to just-- I don't want to say accept near enough is good enough, but there was a lot of, 'Oh, I don't have the 3 years to go back and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. I need to trust my first thought and really try to make that.' I haven't written like that since high school, since Year 12 when you're writing creatively under exam conditions. And as stressful as that was, there was some really exciting turns that it took. But I will never be doing that ever again.

[laughter]

JADE ARNOLD: Well, it sounds like that's a really good writing tip to take to students is that sometimes what you need to do is just write it down and see where it goes, as opposed to focusing on perfecting that sentence.

WILL KOSTAKIS: You just have to decide. Because there's always that fear of, 'Oh, is this, what I have written, the best it could possibly be? What if I have a different idea?' And when you're in an exam and you've got 45 minutes to write or whatever, you can't wait for the better idea. You have to commit to something and then sit there and go, 'I'm going to make this idea, this thought that I had, the best it could possibly be.'

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, exactly. And if you spend so long wondering about the possibilities, the possibilities will never come to be. Yeah, it sounds very stressful, and I'm glad that that's your job and not mine.

[laughter]

As a writer, you're not someone who tends to shy away from dealing with some hard-hitting issues. But 'Monuments', as you've mentioned, is a lot more lighthearted than your other works. That's not to say that there isn't depth to this book. But you've got Connor, who's this Greek-Australian teenager who is gay, and the story doesn't focus on the angst of his coming out. He is just out. There's a lot of diversity within your supporting characters as well. And you really like to focus on issues that are relevant to teen readers, like friendship, breakups, crushes, what would you do with unlimited power, I guess. And then there's that characteristic Kostakis witty dialogue that we've come to know and love from your works. Why was it so important for you to write such a fun book with this lovely representation at its core?

WILL KOSTAKIS: Well, to take the representation half, it's because when I was a teenager, I was so scared of coming out, mostly because the only time I'd ever read it was people treating it like it was the big like, 'Oh my god, no one will ever love me if they know this deep, dark secret.' And then, 'Oh, I came out and everyone loved me because I'm spectacular.'

JADE ARNOLD: You're able to be yourself, yeah.

WILL KOSTAKIS: Sure. That's a less conceited way to say it.

[laughter]

But yeah, look, I didn't want to tell kids that the only queer future that they could anticipate was one where everyone in their life abandoned them and they had to rebuild their life from scratch. I know people who's experience that was, but I also know people who didn't have that experience. And I didn't want people's first thought when they considered coming out to be, 'Oh, I'm choosing between being happy and my family.' And I was somebody who was very happy to put a pin in that sort of sexuality part of myself to keep everyone in my life happy.

And there was that conversation in the editorial process where the editor was like, 'Oh, Will, so there's been a friendship breakup. So, that's because he came out, right, and that's why the friendship broke up?' And I'm like, 'Absolutely not. We are not doing that.' Would have been the easier thing to do, but I did not want it to be the source of conflict. I wanted to find conflict in other places. And that was really, really, really important to me.

And why is the book lighter? Well, I'd just come off writing 2 books back to back, 'The First Third', which was wrestling with my grandmother's mortality, and 'The Sidekicks', which is wrestling with that time my best friend died in high school. And you write 2 books like that back to back, and you talk about those books every single day, and it feels exhausting.

And I'm the sort of person who, sure, we will have a deep and meaningful and it will be great, but I will also make the most wildly inappropriate joke you've ever heard, and you will cackle so loud that we'll be asked to leave whatever venue we're at. That is me, and I wanted to show that part of me, and that was also-- I was visiting schools, talking to kids, and making all these jokes, and all the kids would be laughing nonstop, and I'm like, 'Hi, OK, cool. Here are 2 really depressing books that will make you laugh.'

JADE ARNOLD: And they're gonna make you cry.

WILL KOSTAKIS: Yeah, but this is sad. So, I needed a book that was more in the voice that I present in. And I wanted something light and-- there's still heavy stuff there, obviously.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely.

WILL KOSTAKIS: There's stuff that I cut out of 'The First Third', which was wrestling with-- I was quite young when my grandfather moved into a nursing home and we rarely saw him. It was just, OK, cool. My grandmother went every day, but for us it was like, OK, it's just this thing off to the side that we're just not going to think about. And as I've grown older and I've still had that relationship with my grandmother, I'm just like, oh, I felt a little guilty about that.

And I wanted to write a book where-- and this is the wonderful thing about being a writer. And anyone can be a writer. You can go back to the things that you've regretted, and you can live a version of that where you actually change what happened. And that is what's at the core, and that's the emotional core of 'Monuments'.

JADE ARNOLD: Thank you for sharing that. And for readers who really enjoyed the 'Monuments' duology, what would you recommend they try next?

WILL KOSTAKIS: I would obviously say go to 'Percy Jackson'. Go to those really light, fun, urban fantasy with that mix of contemporary in there. I think that's a really good place to go. But if you want something more fantasy, then I would go to, say, Amy Kaufman. If you're looking for something a bit more mature, I would then look at Lili Wilkinson's fantasy duology, which is 2 standalone novels, 'Deep is the Fen' and 'Hunger of Thorns'. Those 2, I think that's-- and Lili's really great at mixing the personal with the fantastical, and so, that's where I would go next.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, wonderful. Thank you for those recommendations. Let's talk next about 'The Sidekicks', which features on the 9Plus book list. Can you give us your 'between the bookshelves' pitch for this title and tell us who you think it would appeal to?

WILL KOSTAKIS: 'The Sidekicks' is about 4 guys, but they're not 4 best friends. They're 3 guys with the same best friend. Then that best friend passes away and it's about what the others, the swimmer, the rebel and the nerd, what they do to rebuild their lives and eventually trace a path back to each other.

JADE ARNOLD: It's such, such a good book. What type of reader do you think that book would appeal to?

WILL KOSTAKIS: Well, every reader. No, it is somebody who is really deep in their friendships. I think that's the starting point. I would pitch it at the people who are devouring crime novels at the moment. All the books that are titled, like, 'This Cheerleader Has a Secret'. All those books. And I'd be like, 'OK, let's look at the more human side of this, where sometimes you don't get answers. Sometimes you don't get clues and closure. You're just left with an absence and the other people.'

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, and instead of them trying to focus on solving what happened to the kid that died, they're focusing on what that means for them and what life is going to be like with that gap in.

WILL KOSTAKIS: Because even if you do figure out everything that happened, you still have to pick yourself up and keep living. You can't keep looking back. And so this is the flip side to that. It is basically 3 novellas stuck together. First, you deal with the swimmer, who is struggling with his sexuality. You have the rebel, who doesn't really deal with emotion very well. He just runs away. And you have the nerd, who is just totally inept at having human interactions.

And it's all about how the 3 of them build bridges. And we talk about masculinity in crisis and all that stuff. Yawn. But it's really hopefully giving teenagers, teenage boys especially, a blueprint for how to talk through things, how to deal with difficult situations, but also how to be the friend that somebody needs you to be. You can have somebody who you spend every single day sitting next to. You could be, quote unquote, 'friends', but you can also not be actual friends.

JADE ARNOLD: And not really know who they are.

WILL KOSTAKIS: And not be the person they need you to be. And so that is what 'The Sidekicks' is. And it's about 3 teenagers who don't think that they are strong enough to support their own stories coming into their own. So, I would recommend it to teenagers who are a bit uneasy about growing up and who are fearing interpersonal stuff, who are fearing sudden changes, or who have perhaps gone through sudden changes.

The book, I don't want to be like, 'This especially speaks to kids whose friend died.' But that's been the big one where if tragedy has struck a school. This was a book that I started in the aftermath of my friend passing away in high school and dealing with that honestly. And people have seen that, and it has helped them a little bit on their journey.

JADE ARNOLD: That's very special and very important. Something I really loved about how you wrote this book was your use of the 3 different perspectives. So, when we read books with multiple POVs, we're used to seeing alternating characters chapter by chapter. And in 'The Sidekicks' instead of that, as you mentioned earlier, you take us through the 3 friends' perspective. First Ryan, then Harley and then finally Miles. And you don't switch in between. You're committed to one character at a time.

So, it's not something that you encounter often, but it really gives the reader the chance to peel back the layers of the other characters and their connections to Isaac, who's the student who dies. What drove you to structure the narrative this way, and why do you think it's important for readers to expose themselves to novels that use structural writing techniques in different ways?

WILL KOSTAKIS: Oh, this is the part that really pissed people off. And the 'why I did it' was because I wanted to show people that grief, suddenly, when you're in the thick of it, you lose track of time. You almost lose track of who you are and you're just sort of muddling through everything. And it is this thick sludge that overtakes everything, and you're slowly paddling up for air.

When I wrote my first novel, there was an opening scene that was based on my best friend's funeral, and then I cheated, and I wrote 3 months later and I skipped the hard part. And this book is about those 3 months especially. And I didn't want chapter breaks. I didn't want flash forwards. I wanted the reader to stick with a character.

Because after a death, it's like your world pauses, but everything else kind of moves on around you, and you're just sort of trying to catch up. Because somebody who was the centre of your life is no longer there, but everybody else's life is moving without the interruption. And so, that was why I wanted to stick with a character for a very long time. And then you get to see their growth. And the moment you either get the hint of growth or you see the growth, that's when I jump to somebody else.

And I wanted to give you time to sit in a character's perspective, to have all of these preconceived notions built, and then you jump into the character you thought you knew and then realise, oh, wait, that other character did not know them at all.

JADE ARNOLD: And I think that was most apparent with Miles's perspective. That was the one that was, I remember, being the most eye opening as I was reading that. And the end of his section just hits you hard because of that. So, I guess maybe your ulterior motive was to make people cry maybe.

WILL KOSTAKIS: Look, the thing about Miles's is that, look, if you're reading this as a student, perhaps you are either completing or contemplating doing English Extension 2 in the NSW syllabus. Miles's section was my English Extension 2 Major Work.

JADE ARNOLD: Oh, wow.

WILL KOSTAKIS: And so, there is a point in 'The Sidekicks' where he does something where he deletes some stuff, let's just say. That was originally the ending to my short story, and that worked really well as the ending to a short story, but that absolutely pissed off all of my test readers because that was the end to Miles's story, but it was not the end to the 3 stories that we'd heard.

JADE ARNOLD: It wasn't the end to 'The Sidekicks'.

WILL KOSTAKIS: Yeah. So, I had to then tack something on at the end that was closure for their entire narrative.

JADE ARNOLD: OK, very interesting. What books would you recommend readers to try next if they really enjoyed 'The Sidekicks'?

WILL KOSTAKIS: I think 'The Sidekicks' is the closest to American contemporary young adult, or at least the young adult that I was reading 10 or so years ago. I would look at authors like David Levithan. I would look at authors like earlier works by Becky Albertalli. I would look at the works of John Corey Whaley especially. I think it shares a lot of DNA.

And it's no surprise to me that 'The Sidekicks' is my book that was released overseas. It does have that more American YA flavor. A lot of that was because when I was writing 'The Sidekicks', I was reading a lot of American YA, because the Australian young adult wasn't really all that queer. Queerness was always something to the side, and I wanted to see what American writers were doing to bring queerness to the fore, because Australia was quite behind and quite conservative in that respect. So, I think I would look to American contemporary titles.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, OK. Great. Thank you. The second novel you ever published, 'The First Third', won the 2014 Inky Award and was a shortlisted book for the CBCA Book of the Year Older Readers category, and is on the 7 to 9 book list. Can you give us the 'between the bookshelves' pitch for this book?

WILL KOSTAKIS: What if your great grandmother gave you a wildly inappropriate bucket list to complete? That includes find your mother a husband, un-gay your older brother, and make your younger brother not a twerp.

[laughter]

So, obviously not at all based on my life at all.

JADE ARNOLD: Not at all.

WILL KOSTAKIS: Yeah, this was an incredibly fun book to write, because my first book absolutely tanked. And I was like, 'OK, cool, I'm only going to get one more chance at this.' So, I threw so much of my life into that book, and I exhausted everything. And it was a really great way to air all of my grievances but then to tell everyone on the last page, hey, but I love you regardless.

JADE ARNOLD: There's so much love for the grandmother in this novel. She's the glue that holds the family together. So much so that Billy is trying to fulfill this ridiculously inappropriate and impossible bucket list. There's also Billy's best friend, Lucas, who has cerebral palsy and is the constant supportive friend in his life who loans out his father to Billy to teach him how to ride a bike, something that Billy sees as a missed opportunity due to his absent father. How do you create such 3-dimensional characters in your writing, and where do you draw your inspiration from?

WILL KOSTAKIS: Well, we start with your father abandoning you. So, if your dad hasn't done that yet, here is my 5-point plan to make your father hate you. No.

[laughter]

Again, it was like 'We Could Be Something'. So, this is the book that shares the most DNA with 'We Could Be Something' where I really started with my life and built things out from there. And because this book was a love letter to the people in my life who have supported me. And while my friend didn't loan out his dad for me to ride a bike, we were on Duke of Edinburgh Camp in Year 10, and it was a bike riding camp.

And I'm like, 'I can't ride a bike.' And they're like, 'Who can't ride a bike?' I'm like, 'Someone whose dad took his bike away in the divorce.' And then the teacher was like, 'Aw, but you still have to go.' And so they let me ride in the truck for the first day of the bike riding camp. And then the second day, when we were on the edge of a cliff for the entire day, they're like, 'Today is the day you're going to learn to ride a bike.' And I'm like, 'I have no--

JADE ARNOLD: Sink or swim.

WILL KOSTAKIS: I have no coordination.' So, instead of hitting a curb, I would be hitting a sheer drop. But my mate stayed up, and it's the woods. So, it's dark at 5 pm. And he taught me how to ride a bike.

JADE ARNOLD: That's so sweet.

WILL KOSTAKIS: And that's something that really, really stuck with me. And I didn't want to write a book-- I know I joked about my dad not being around-- but I did not write a book that was like, 'Woe is me, Dad's not there.' I wanted to write about the absence, but I wanted to write about the people who fill that absence, the people who step up. My grandmother who cleared out her life savings so that we could stay at the school we were going to. The one who fed us.

I wanted to pay tribute to the mother who worked tirelessly to make sure we didn't go without. We still went without, but it didn't feel like it. It's a childhood that I would change nothing about with hindsight. And I wanted to write about the brothers who each had their own sort of experience of the divorce that wasn't pleasant, who frustrate me to no end, but who I love dearly and would do anything for.

And we're so used to when somebody frustrates us just abandoning them and being like, 'Oh, you're toxic. I don't like you. Rarr!' But it's about cutting through and finding that common ground. And this book was about the importance of family, and yeah, it's-- a lot of it is from my life. But again, second draft, third draft. Look, I didn't hide it as well with this book. This is very much like, 'Oh, this is potentially defamatory.'

[laughs]

And it's even though-- I think the characteristics of the people kind of stayed the same, and then what happened in the book was fictional. But the big thing was the friendship in the book, that was mostly made up. Because what I did was I split myself in 2. There was the part of me that is really afraid of everything, and then the part of me that's going to say the sassy thing and going to do the thing. And it's like, so I split that into 2 characters, and they were in conversation with each other.

And also Lucas was my queer part that I was too scared to say, this is me. So, what did I do? I created a heterosexual character, Bill, who is obviously the author stand-in, and I had the queer character who was taking his first awkward steps into queerness, but that was just the best friend. And there was no way people would assume that there was more me there than in the other character.

JADE ARNOLD: Well, it's so lovely to see that your writing has come to a point where you've got that queerness represented in your--

WILL KOSTAKIS: Too much, some might say.

[laughter]

JADE ARNOLD: No. So, you received your first book deal when you were still in high school, and it was published when you were just 19. I know that you've touched on that a little bit, but can you tell us about that experience and how that shaped you as a writer?

WILL KOSTAKIS: I mean, read 'We Could Be Something'. A lot of it's there. But that's the thing. I was not ready to be an author that young. And every time I meet a teenager who is like me, who's like, 'I have to get published, I have to get published,' and it's like, 'No. You have to be a writer. There is a difference. Enjoy it. Write it.' We're entering the era of AI slop anyway. The odds of any of us breaking through are slim to none anymore.

You cannot change how your book is received. You cannot change whether you will be an award-winning author or not. Look, I'm sitting here having won the Prime Minister's Literary Award. When I was in a meeting with my publisher at 17, they had a few books out on the table, and they're like, 'Which author do you want to be? Who would you want to be like?' And I pointed to one author who was a critical darling and an award winner, and the publisher looked at me and said, 'Will, that's beyond you, OK.' And the thing was, I was young enough to believe them.

And it was a really tough experience. I'm really glad to have gone through it. And while I tell everyone else to be like, 'No, take your time. The book you write in your early 20s is going to be so much bolder, because you're going to be so much more comfortable with who you are, and you'll understand what you want to say.' But I know that I'm only the author that I am because I had that unpleasant experience at 17 to 19, went out to the wilderness, and then came back in my early 20s with gusto and wrote 'The First Third'. So, yeah, it was an interesting experience. I'm glad I went through it. I did not like going through it at the time.

JADE ARNOLD: So, I guess you'd say that there's no rush to be published when you're 19 and you can wait a little bit longer.

WILL KOSTAKIS: But there are student magazines you can write for. There are ways to build an audience for your writing. Do that and don't worry about an audience. All you need is a pen and a paper or Microsoft Word when it's not telling you to be like, 'Hey, rewrite this using AI.' Just enjoy the act of writing and how good it makes you feel.

JADE ARNOLD: I think that's a really, really important tip to take. Are you able to share with us what you're working on now for your next book?

WILL KOSTAKIS: Yes, I can, actually. I am writing a really fun novel. It is called 'Otis Ottley and the School in the Sky'. It is my middle grade debut. It is about a boy named Otis who desperately wants to go to magic school like everybody else he knows, only he did not get accepted into magic school, and he is now the only kid in Year 7 in his entire town. And so it follows Otis as he conspires to break into the magic school and scam them out of an education.

JADE ARNOLD: Sounds like such a fun read, and definitely can see a lot of middle grade readers keen to see what it would be like. I guess they could put themselves more in Otis's shoes. Because who amongst us has actually ever been accepted to a magic school? Can't wait. Really excited to hear that one.

A lot of our listeners are teacher librarians or teachers that are PRC coordinators who care very deeply about nurturing a love of reading in their students. What advice would you give to them about reading in school?

WILL KOSTAKIS: Honestly, don't push kids to read a certain type of book. Just because a book spoke to you when you were a kid doesn't mean that kids nowadays will connect to it in the same way. Give them space in a library to walk in and pick the book that speaks to them. If you think it's a bit young for them, if you think it's a graphic novel, shh. We don't care. I want the kid to be reading.

There is a whole future ahead of devices causing brain rot and them never picking up a book again. We want to really nurture that habit and that love of reading. And obviously, if they pick up a book that is written by me or is on the PRC, wonderful. Ding, ding, ding. But if they pick up a book that is neither a Will Kostakis classic or a book that is on the PRC, it's fine. Get them reading. Get them loving reading.

And if you think the book that they're reading is trash, have a go at reading it alongside them and talk to them about it. I think the one thing that has, when I get a bit snobby about a book, the one thing that changes that is when I experience it through their eyes and I get to experience their enthusiasm. And while it might not change my opinion on it, I suddenly understand the appeal a lot more.

JADE ARNOLD: And I think that's something that we can often forget as adult readers too. Something that we're reading in a middle grade or young adult novel might come across as really cliche, because we've encountered it so many times in all the books that we've read. But for someone who's still relatively new to their reading journey, that might be the first time that they've come across what we now consider to be cliche. So, that might be groundbreaking for them.

And then they've got their whole reading life ahead of them to see that same kind of pattern repeat across other books. And they get to think of that as, 'Oh, this is the first time I ever saw that in a novel, and I feel like they did it better,' or 'they did it worse,' or whatever. So, yeah, just remembering that we're not the target audience of the books that we're recommending is always really important. On that same note, then, can you recommend a few YA books that you think our listeners need to know about?

WILL KOSTAKIS: OK. John Corey Whaley's novel 'Noggin'. This is about a kid who gets a head transplant. And so, he dies and then comes back 5 years later. All of his friends are now 5 years older. So, they're off at university. His parents couldn't deal with the grief of losing him. They're now divorced. And he is now back.

And so it is-- I kept talking to the author. I'm like, 'This is a ghost story. He has come back to haunt them.' And he's like, 'I never intended that.' I'm like, 'No, it is. It is great.' And for me, I read it as a kid whose best friend died in high school. I'm like, 'Oh my god, this is bringing all those feelings to the fore.' But it's really fun. I really, really enjoyed that.

I love, if you've got a younger reader in your life, Lili Wilkinson's 'Bravepaw'. That is really, really great.

JADE ARNOLD: That's her first middle grade.

WILL KOSTAKIS: Actually it's more junior fiction.

JADE ARNOLD: Junior fiction. Sorry.

WILL KOSTAKIS: It is a really light, fun adventure that reminded me of a junior version of 'Deltora Quest'. Really cool, and all the munchkins I've given it to have absolutely devoured it and they're ready for book 2. And anything by Claire Zorn. Anything by Shivaun Plozza. If you've got a young boy reader, Jack Heath, really, really popular. And it's those easy, gentler novels. You can start with his junior fiction and go all the way up to his young adult. And maybe keep them away from the adult fiction.

JADE ARNOLD: Until they're old enough.

WILL KOSTAKIS: And so you can really, really guide them through their reading journey with a Jack Heath novel, which is really great.

JADE ARNOLD: For any teachers out there who'd be interested in booking you for an author talk or a writing workshop, how can they book you and what can they expect?

WILL KOSTAKIS: They can expect the greatest author visit ever. No. [laughs] The first thing they should do is get in contact with me. You can visit my website. All the contact details are there. There's a form they can fill out. That is the best way to reach me. And in terms of what can they expect, I am pretty chill about it.

Whether it is a workshop that is very generalised or whether it is specifically for a particular assessment coming up, I have everything from 'Will get my Year 6s and Year 7s interested in creative writing and get them to build a scene' all the way up to 'It's Year 12, they've got the HSC coming up, teach them craft of writing.' And I'm like, 'Cool, I'll do that in 2 hours.'

JADE ARNOLD: No stress, no biggie.

WILL KOSTAKIS: But that's the vegetables of what I provide. I'm also a big believer in the author talk where the author comes in and inspires. I tell them my life story during an author talk. I tell them about my books. I get them interested in me and my work. And so, hopefully, they then visit the library and borrow. It's about building connection, and it's about getting them reading. Right? If they are reading one book a year, I want them to read 2. If they are reading 2 books a year, I want to get them to 4. And I work in tandem with the library staff to really try to get them engaged.

JADE ARNOLD: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Will. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you about your books, and I'm sure our listeners with teen readers in their lives will be eager to check out your books for more heartfelt yet witty stories as they work to complete the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge.

WILL KOSTAKIS: Thank you.

[theme music - Matt Ottley, 'Dance of the Jellyfish']

JADE ARNOLD: Thanks for tuning in to 'Between the bookshelves'.

This podcast is produced by the Arts Unit of the NSW Department of Education as part of the 'Listen @ The Arts Unit' series.

For more information about our programs, to access our show notes or to listen to other podcasts, explore our website at artsunit.nsw.edu.au.

For more information about the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge, including our book lists, visit PremiersReadingChallenge.nsw.edu.au.

Theme music, 'Dance of the Jellyfish', composed by Matt Ottley. Copyright Matt Ottley, 2024. Reproduced and communicated with permission.

Background music licensed by Envato Elements.

Copyright, State of NSW (Department of Education), 2025.