In the first of an occasional series on the people ‘behind the scenes’ of the Aotearoa children’s lit scene, Jane Arthur speaks with Joy Sellen. Joy is the administrator of the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults and has just been awarded the Betty Gilderdale Award for outstanding service to children’s literature and literacy.
Joy Sellen must have handled thousands of Aotearoa children’s books over the last nine years and had interactions with every award-winning writer and illustrator in the country, though if it were up to her no one would know who she was. ‘I’m a background person!’ she claimed multiple times during our conversation last week.
But now it’s time for her turn in the spotlight, because the administrator of the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, who is about to work on her tenth awards, has just been awarded the prestigious 2024 Storylines Betty Gilderdale Award for outstanding service to children’s literature and literacy.
‘I got told someone was nominating me and I was asked if I’d be okay with that because it would mean giving a speech if I won, and I went away and thought about it overnight because my initial reaction was, well, no, that’s not me,’ she says.
It took several people—Christine and Vicki at Storylines, and past winner of the award, Crissi Blair—to convince Joy that she was a worthy recipient, and that she should perhaps think of the award as taking one for the administrators of the world. ‘Back-office people are not having a good time in the world right now, so it’s quite nice to get an award.’
Joy finally agreed to accept the nomination as she thought it was a nice gesture, never expecting to win. ‘I felt quite embarrassed by it! I thought, no, my job isn’t to put myself forward, my job is to hang around in the background and help other people to shine.’
The job of administrator of the book awards is a full-on one. From the outside, it might appear that the awards happen on one night, or perhaps over a couple of months around when the finalists are announced. In reality, it’s a full year of work: there are a busy nine months between entry submissions opening in November and the awards ceremony in August. She needs to keep track of all the details and deadlines, the meetings and minutes, the judges, and multiple copies of the 120-plus books that are entered each year. There are reviews by school students to coordinate and Books Alive events around the country. ‘And the big monster that is the HELL Reading Challenge carries on until the end of the year,’ says Joy. ‘And there’s a lot of stuff happening after the ceremony and before the next entries open.’
Back-office people are not having a good time in the world right now, so it’s quite nice to get an award.
Not only that, but she works from home. ‘My family is very good—they put up with the house being a warehouse, full of boxes of books and pizza wheels [for the Reading Challenge] and promotional material in every room in the house, except the bathroom and kitchen!’
When I ask Joy about her favourite moments from the awards over the years, the HELL Reading Challenge is right up there. ‘I love working on the Reading Challenge,’ she says. ‘The people at HELL are amazing—they’re all so enthusiastic. It’s something that really matters to them.’ The numbers are impressive, too. ‘The first wheels went out in 2014, with 95,000 wheels to 220 schools and 160 public libraries. So far this year, we’ve got 604 schools and 203 libraries, and have sent out 336,000 wheels. That’s a record.’ That’s up to 2.4 million books being read by tamariki and rangatahi around the country this year!
There are many other happy moments from the past decade in the role. ‘With the awards, one of the things that I’ve really liked is meeting all the different judges and learning about their different perspectives and what motivates them,’ says Joy. ‘Watching them educate each other.’
She likes to celebrate the winners, too—especially when they don’t see it coming. ‘My favourite moments can be when someone who really, really doesn’t expect to win wins an award. Watching Pippa Werry get her YA fiction award last year, she did not expect to get that,’ she says. ‘It made me so happy, and shocked that she was so shocked. The ones that stick with you are those that don’t expect it.’ Joy is probably most moved when she sees others moved.
She rattles off many other special moments she remembers from awards ceremonies over the years. ‘I remember when Josh Morgan and Sacha Cotter won and they brought their new baby up on stage—that just made me want to cry. And every time Gavin [Bishop] wins, even though he keeps doing it, he always manages to say something so powerful that you think, Wow, that’s really great.’
That’s up to 2.4 million books being read by tamariki and rangatahi around the country this year!
Along with those multi-award-winners, Joy particularly loves getting to work with first-time authors and illustrators. ‘When I’m trying to get them wrangled into doing Books Alive events and so on, they’re so excited.’ In 2020, the ceremony was held online due to the Covid lockdown. ‘When Selina [Tusitala Marsh] won book of the year for Mophead I got to be the one who told her, and she was just blown away. For me, it was really special because I’m usually not the one who says these things, and that was amazing.’
Until a couple of years ago, she worked weekends at the children’s hospital as well as doing the admin job during the week, and there she saw from another angle the power of literature to make connections. ‘Often, the nurses would ask me to go and keep people company for one reason or another, and a lot of time that was talking about books, or reading books to little kids, or planning the plots of our great novels,’ she laughs.
‘I remember once with one of our long-term patients talking about the book awards. The ceremony was coming up, and they refused to let me go home at the end of the shift until they’d painted my fingernails rainbow colours for the awards,’ says Joy. ‘That’s one of my most precious awards-related experiences. Even though that was a Sunday and the awards weren’t until the Wednesday, I looked after my nails so carefully—they only have really cheap nail polish on the wards. But those kids were so good at keeping things in perspective [for me].’
Joy is hesitant to give her opinion about the state of publishing in New Zealand since she’s spent years in her role explicitly not being allowed to, but there is one area that is very important to her: inclusive representation.
Can we please have more books where kids who have disabilities, or trans or gay kids get to do stuff, and it’s not treated like an issue, and they don’t have to die?
‘A lot of the kids I was working with at the hospital were mental health patients, and it would have helped them a hell of a lot to see a lot more of themselves in books. I don’t want these kids to feel like they have to hide.’
She explains: ‘Can we please have more books where kids who have disabilities, or trans or gay kids get to do stuff, and it’s not treated like an issue, and they don’t have to die? That’s a really personal thing to me. And neurodivergent kids. There are so many of these particular people in my life, and I look at how lacking the books were when I was growing up and I’m pleased to see progress, but I wish it was faster.’
When Joy reflects on what working in the realm of children’s literature has taught her, she’s surprised to discover there’s a lot.
‘I’ve learnt that I still love children’s books. It’s been great to have an excuse to keep on reading them—I probably would have anyway, but I get to see books that I wouldn’t know about.’
But it’s not always such predictable things she’s learnt. ‘I’ve learnt that I’m quite good at organising other people, which is quite a surprise for someone who is quite shy. I’ve learnt I’m a better peacemaker than I would have guessed,’ she says. ‘I’ve also learnt about perspective—what matters and what doesn’t.’ Spoken like an ace administrator.
And one last thing.
‘Adults should read children’s books too.’ Spoken like a true children’s booklover.
You can read Joy’s lecture on the Storylines website here.
Jane Arthur
Jane Arthur's debut children's book, Brown Bird(PRH) was published in May 2024 to widespread acclaim. Jane is co-founder of The Sapling, co-owned and managed GOOD BOOKS, a small independent bookshop in Pōneke Wellington and has twice judged the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, in 2019 and 2020. Her debut poetry collection, Craven (VUP) won the Jessie Mackay Prize for best first book of poetry at the 2020 Ockham NZ Book Awards, and her second collection, Calamities!(THWUP) was longlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry in the 2024 Ockham Awards.