Will Kostakis

William Kostakis attended Newington College in Stanmore, Sydney.^[1] In high school, he won the 2005 Sydney Morning Herald Young Writer of the Year prize for a short story called 'Bing Me', and went on to sign his first book deal in his final year of high school.^[1]

He attended Sydney University.^[1]

Kostakis scored his first publishing contract at 17, while still completing his final year of high school,^[2] Newington College.^[3] He began work on a variant of Loathing Lola when he was 11 years old, and continued to refine it.^[4]

Loathing Lola, his first novel for young adults, was released in August 2008.^[5] The novel was a critical success, dubbed a "kickass debut", "a smart, sharp tale about fame, love and loss" by Dolly magazine,^[6] "brilliant" by The Examiner,^[7] "a promising debut from a young and talented Australian writer" by Danielle Trabsky at Australian Book Review, "polished" and "extremely funny" by Mike Shuttleworth at the State Library of Victoria,^[8] and received many other positive reviews.^[9][10][11]

Kostakis' second novel, The First Third won the 2014 Inky Awards, and was shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year: Older Readers and Prime Minister's Literary Awards.^[12] His novel The Sidekicks, published in 2016, was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards.

We Could Be Something won the 2024 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction.^[13] It was also shortlisted in 2024 for the Victorian Premier's Prize for Writing for Young Adults^[14] and the Young Adult Book Award, Queensland Literary Awards.^[15]

On 1 July 2020 Kostakis became a mentor of Express Media's newly renamed Hachette Australia Prize for Young Writers and, along with Hachette head of children's publishing Jeanmarie Morosin, joined the judging panel for the prize.^[16]