Local author Tristan Bancks’s novel Scar Town has been shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards Book of the Year.
Inspired by his childhood in the Blue Mountains and family holidays in Jindabyne, he says the crime-thriller novel was also recently shortlisted by the Australian Booksellers’ Association Book of the Year Awards.
‘I’ve always been fascinated by drowned towns. I wrote this book over 13 years, coming back to it between other books. It wouldn’t let me go. I kept wondering what it would it be like if three kids swam out to a house that was poking out from a lake and they found something inside, something scary and mysterious that changed the way they saw their small town, their families and themselves.’
Bancks recently ran a writing workshop for young people at Brunswick Heads Library, as part of their Youth Week celebrations, drawing on writing tools he used to complete the novel.
The CBCA 2024 Book of the Year Award Winners and Honours will be announced Friday, August 16.
For more information go to www.tristanbancks.com.
