A Ballarat author and Federation University tutor has been handed a major honour at this year’s Indie Book Awards.
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Catherine Crowley topped the young adult fiction category with her book Words In Deep Blue.
The novel is about a young girl who’s brother drowns before she goes to work in a second hand book store, where in a section called the letter library, she finds notes and annotations in the margins of books left by other people.
It combines Crowley’s own experience of finding notes from the former owners of books, with a message about grief.
Crowley said it was very humbling to have been recognised through the Indie Book Awards.
“There are such great people on the list with me and there is a great young adult fiction out there,” Crowley said.
“It is humbling and an honour and independent booksellers are the lifeblood of the industry.
“You write for different reasons but to know the book has connected with readers is a wonderful thing.”
Words In Deep Blue is her sixth book while a seventh, co-authored by Fiona Wood and Simone Howell, is also on its way.
Some of her other books, including Graffiti Moon, also explored themes of leaving messages behind.
It is something Crowley said she had always had an interest in.
“I love second hand books and how we leave ourselves on the world in different ways,” she said.
“Graffiti Moon was about young people painting on the landscape.
“We are all trying to make sense of our world, and that is part of the themes within Deep Blue, books are times travellers.”
Crowley is originally from Gippsland, but moved to Ballarat a year ago, after she lived in Melbourne.
She worked as a teacher before she quit her job and studied creative writing and publishing at RMIT University. Since then she has combined the two to teach creative writing at Federation University.
Words In Deep Blue was first published in 2016.
The Indie Book Awards, as chosen by independent booksellers, members of Leading Edge Books, reward and promote excellence in Australian writing. Since its inception in 2008, awards have gone to renowned authors Tim Winton, Anh Do and Craig Silvey.
