This page presents creative writing opportunities created by the AAWP and our partners.
More, non-AAWP, prizes and activities can be found on the News thread.

The Prizes and Partnerships Portfolio is managed by AAWP President | Chair, Associate Professor Julia Prendergast, contactable directly at jprendergast@swin.edu.au

Got a question? Want to be on our mailing list? Email us at jprendergast@swin.edu.au

AAWP prizes have been ratified by Arts Law: ‘Arts Law was very impressed with AAWP’s attitude, which clearly demonstrated AAWP’s respect for writers.’

You can read more here: Arts Law Advises AAWP on Best Practice

AAWP & Recent Work Press Novella Prize

Have you written a novella in prose or verse? Or a hybrid novella that crosses genre boundaries? Enter the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP) and Recent Work Press (RWP) ‘Novella Prize’ for your chance to win.

If you win you will receive: a written commendation from AAWP. This ‘tick of approval’ will see your manuscript assessed without delay. You will, effectively, leap to the top of the submissions pile. You will also receive a $500.00 cash prize and fully subsidised conference fees to attend the annual conference of the AAWP (November 2026) where you will be invited to read from your work.

If your full manuscript is as robust as the synopsis and opening extract, you may secure a publishing contract with RWP: https://recentworkpress.com

Take advantage of this stunning opportunity. Fast track your writing journey in a fiercely competitive market.

Read the full terms of entry here

Publication News

2024 winning entry of the inaugural AAWP and Spineless Wonders Novella Prize, Eggshell by Olivia De Zilva, will be published in November 2025 with Spineless Wonders.

2026 Winner: Banks of Iceland by Craig Cormick

Author Bio
Craig Cormick is an award-winning author of over 40 books of fiction and non-fiction. He enjoys messing with history just about as much as history enjoys messing with him.

Judges’ Report
I started this submission assuming that it would be focusing on the GFC and Iceland’s response to banks, so it was a surprise – a pleasant one – to find myself instead in a narrative that straddles centuries and shifts the notion of linear time to a more Tralfamadorian logic. The use of Australian idiom, and the easy conversations between narrator and Banks, work well to puncture any pomposity or overly scholarly discourse that could have dominated this work. It is identified in the synopsis as a concatenation of memoir, essay, travelogue, contemplation, and imagination, which means the reader is kept slightly off kilter, but in a way that generates – in me at least – a willingness to suspend disbelief and see what the narrative takes me.

Second Place: The School House by Nigel Featherstone

Third Place: As with everything else the end eventually comes by Daniel Juckes

Highly Commended: Where do we start? by Sarah St Vincent Welch

Highly Commended: Lorikeet in the Jacaranda by Lucy Durneen

Past Winners:

2025
- Winner: A Turn About the Garden by Nick Clarke
- Second Place: Tobin Park by Kangli Hu
- Third Place: White Foam by Yannick Thoraval
- Highly Commended: The Ballad of Reef Jones by Kathryn Lister
2024
- Winner: Eggshell by Olivia De Zilva
- Highly Commended: My Mother Didn’t Want Me To Get A Tattoo by Kathryn Crowley, and The Longing by Alberta Natasia Adji
- Commended: Emotional Eaters by E Chennatt, and Protest by Irma Gold

**AAWP & Westerly Magazine Life Writing Prize**

In 2026, the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP) and Westerly Magazine are offering a prize for Life Writing. We welcome submissions of autobiography, biography, memoir, and essays. We celebrate Life Writing as a rumination upon memory and experience and encourage creative and hybrid approaches.

The prize is open to writers at all stages of their journey; emerging and established writers are welcome to enter. The prize recognises excellence in nonfiction, creative nonfiction and hybrid modes of storytelling. Hybrid storytelling is broadly conceived as storytelling that crosses traditional boundaries of nonfiction and creative nonfiction and/or is experimental in form.

We invite you to send Life Writing submissions of up to 3500 words. The winner will receive a written commendation from AAWP, a $500 cash prize, a one-year subscription to Westerly, and conference fees to attend the annual conference of the AAWP, where they will be invited to read from their work. Please see item 3 (Terms and conditions). The winner’s work will be considered for publication by Westerly.

We encourage you to take advantage of this stunning opportunity to celebrate diverse interpretations of nonfiction, creative nonfiction and hybrid modes of storytelling, and be welcomed into the thriving community of writers associated with the AAWP.

Read the full terms of entry here

2026 Winner: ‘Suicide-I or Autocide’ by Daniel Ray

Author Bio
Daniel Ray lives between Naarm and Queanbeyan and writes fiction, essays and poetry. Recent publications include: Griffith Review, Meanjin, Overland, Short Fiction and Island. He is currently writing his debut novel, Cusp, about grief, trauma and queer desire during adolescence. He is a PhD candidate at La Trobe University, researching affect, queerness and literary style.

Judges’ Report
This essay is formally bold and intellectually restless. The obsessive first person becomes both method and subject, producing a genuinely unstable, questioning account of selfhood rather than a resolved autobiographical narrative. The readings of authors such as Walser and Agamben complement what the author implies are their own collection of ‘small ruins’, held together in ways that bring nuance, intellect and humour to a deeply important subject. It’s this dextrous and developed layering that perhaps moved ‘Suicide-I or: Autocide’ to the top of the pile; the work is a combination of daring, insight, confession, subversion and critique. It is a very worthy winner of the 2026 AAWP/Westerly Life Writing Prize.

Second Place: ‘Relationships of Braille’ by Amanda Tink

Third Place: ‘Geographical’ by Leila Riley Wright

Highly Commended: ‘Snow Country / A Death Haibun’ by Ana Louisa Davis

2026 Shortlist:

‘Propositions on Hands’ by Jeffrey-Michael Kane
‘When fever wings towards us’ by Madelaine Dickie
‘A world to come’ by Oscar Davis
‘King of the Dirt’ by Rose Bishop
‘Canis Major’ by Libby Broome
‘Pattern’ by Angela Edward

Past Winners:

2025
- Winner: ‘Acts of Self-Preservation’ by Rashida Murphy
- Highly Commended: ‘An Bees’ by Marina O
- Highly Commended: ‘Neoprene Machine’ by Libby Angel
- Longlist:
  - ‘The Unrequiteds’ by Lily Chan
  - ‘Sisters in the Morning’ by Rosa Cass
  - ‘The Narcissist’ by Libby Angel
  - ‘Sonata in Me Major’ by Josh McGlaughlin
  - ‘Hello, World’ by Tenille McDermott
  - ‘Little Cloud’ by Jena Woodhouse
  - ‘Savings’ by Rachel Leary
  - ‘Sutures’ by Farah Elrifai
  - ‘Chunks’ by Judyth Emanuel
2024
- Winner: ‘tiger man’ by Rose Hunter
- Highly Commended: ‘The Blue House’ by Oliver Shaw, and ‘Our unmoored selves’ by Dani Netherclift
2023
- Winner: ‘There is another world, but it is this one’ by Luke Allan
- Second Place: ‘Monster mouth’ by Leila Wright
- Third Place: ‘There are no waves down here’ by Soren Tae Smith
- Highly Commended: ‘Thinking about ornithophobia’ by Michael Farrell
- Highly Commended: ‘The lotus lake’ by Elizabeth Tyson-Doneley
2022
- Winner: ‘Doors’ by Suzanne Hermanoczki – Read the winning entry on the Westerly website, here

AAWP & Express Media Sudden Writing Prize

We are deeply interested in capturing a composite “picture” of what people are writing about. Now. Please send creative work—short-short fiction, “sudden” fiction, “sketchy” stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, as well as hybrid forms.

We are accepting submissions on the following scale: up to 400 words prose, 40 lines for poetry, 200 words for prose poems, and the equivalent for hybrid forms. Submissions must be previously unpublished. Please send your most polished work, without delay.

If you win you will receive a written commendation from AAWP and a $500 cash prize. You will have your work published on the Express Media website and receive a Voiceworks subscription. You will also receive fully subsidised conference fees to attend the annual conference of the AAWP, where you will be invited to read from your work.
Read the full terms of entry here

Publication News

2024 winner of the AAWP and Express Media Sudden Writing Prize Eartha Davis’ debut poetry collection màthair beinn – featuring her prize winning entry ‘a’ deanamh gràidh, a’ deanamh bròn’ – was published in September 2025 by Vagabond Press.

2026 Winner: ‘Walking across a sink hole and trying not to fall in’ by Keeley Zappia

Author Bio
Keeley is a twenty-one-year-old writer who lives in Melbourne. She recently graduated with a Bachelor of Media and Communication, majoring in Professional Writing and Editing. Since she was young, Keeley has been found with her head in a book or typing in an open Google Doc, reflecting on grief and love. She also enjoys secondhand shopping, travel, going to the park and drinking wine with friends—and writing about it all after.

Judges’ Report
From the first line, ‘Walking across a sink hole and trying not to fall in’ engaged us with its restrained yet expansive prose. Its pithy one-liners – such as ‘Mama looked so beautiful kneeling over dad in her lace. I hope she lets me wear that dress someday.’ and the repeated refrain of ‘In our next life, I want to own nothing.’ – drip with stark lyricism, bluntly depicting the brutal contradictions of generational grief and mother/daughter love, yearning to be unburdened of possessions while clinging to hope. It left us with a powerful sense of the emptiness it speaks to, both heartbreaking in its reality and unsentimental in affectation. ‘Walking across a sink hole and trying not to fall in’ has been selected as the winner of the 2026 AAWP & Express Media Sudden Writing Prize because it knows exactly the spiritual wasteland it wants to take us to and then goes there, without comfort or apology, with every well-placed word.

Second Place: ‘The Cold Sleep’ by Libby Broome

Third Place: ‘Dirt and Danube’ by Blue Jordan

Highly Commended:

‘Elegy For a Fig Wasp’ by Chloe Ho
‘My Father’s Hands’ by Nimrada Silva
‘My Name Means Soup in Chinese (But You Already Know)’ by Sophie Tong

Past Winners:

2025
- Winner: ‘Food Baby’ by Ledya Khamou – Read the 2025 winning entry on the Express Media website, here
- Second Place: ‘second adolescence’ by Saanjana Kapoor
- Third Place: ‘January’ by Eden Crain
- Commended:
  - ‘Exit Sign’ by Nimrada Silva
  - ‘The River Watches Me’ by Parvati Dinesh
2024
- Winner: ‘a’ deanamh gràidh, a’ deanamh bròn’ by Eartha Davis – Read the 2024 winning entry on the Express Media website, here
- Second Place: ‘Out West’ by Siena Bordignon
- Third Place: ‘Cross by the river’ by Kobi Simpson
- Highly Commended: ‘The commute’ by Saanjana Kapoor, and ‘Behind the scenes’ by Zoe Sorenson
2023
- Winner: ‘this is the earth’s Alarm system going off’ – Maz Howard – Read the 2023 winning entry on the Express Media website, here
- Second Place – Second Place: ‘Vaginapoem’ – Coco Stallman
- Third Place: ‘There is a song you used to sing to me’ – Martina Kontos
- Highly Commended: ‘cyber_memory_archive.exe’ – Matthew Platakos
2022
- Winner: ‘Hereditary’ by Jeimer Ng – Read the 2022 winning entry on the Express Media website, here.
- Highly Commended: ‘Before it was white’ by Isabelle Biondi Saville
2021
- Winner: ‘Crack’ by Zoe Davidson – Read the 2021 winning entry on the Express Media website, here.
- Highly Commended: ‘Everyday Supernovae’ by Jeimer Ng
2020
- Winner: ‘Little Apocalypse’ by Raphail Spartalis – Read the 2020 winning entry on the Express Media website, here.

AAWP & Ubud Writers and Readers Festival Translators’ Prize

This prize is offered in partnership with the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF), and is open to translators at any stage of their career.

The winner receives a written commendation from AAWP, a festival pass to UWRF and accomodation for the duration of the festival (*Terms and Conditions apply, see below). In addition, you will receive fully subsidised conference fees to attend the annual conference of the AAWP, where you will be invited to read from your work. The editors at Meniscus Literary Journal will also consider your work for publication.

Entries must be no more than 30 lines (poetry) or 3000 words (prose), and entrants can translate their own work into English. AAWP/UWRF recognise that translation is an act of interpretation, even when the original work is the translator’s own.

Entries must include a cover letter (maximum one A4 page, not included in the word count). This should incorporate a ‘Translator’s Statement of Intention’ addressing your aims in approaching this particular work of translation, including (but not limited to): limitations, possibilities and aims, together with any pertinent information re. the original author (if the work is not the translator’s own). The cover letter is assessed as part of the judging process.

Read the full terms of entry here

Publication News

Alison Entrekin, the winner of the 2022 AAWP/UWRF Translators’ Prize for Great Sertão: Meanderings, has a contract with Simon & Schuster U.S. and Bloomsbury Publishing U.K. for the publication of the same work, now with the definitive title Vastlands: The Crossing (January 2027). Entrekin has received the following GLORIOUS accolade for the forthcoming book: Officer of the Order of Rio Branco. The decoration, awarded by the Brazilian government, honours individuals for achievements in diplomacy and contributions to the nation. For further information, please see the official announcement on the Brazilian government website.

Previous winner of the AAWP and UWRF Translators’ Prize, Irina Sadovina’s translation of White Moss by Anna Nerkagi will be published by Pushkin Press in 2026. This edition includes Sadovina’s winning entry for the 2021 Prize.

2026 Winner: ‘Cuerdas’ translated by Lilit Thwaites

Translator Bio
Lilit Žekulin Thwaites is an award-winning literary translator (Spanish>English), and Adjunct Professor at La Trobe University. Her translations include Crossing Waters (Luisa Etxenike), the bestselling The Librarian of Auschwitz (Antonio Iturbe), Australian Connection (multiple authors), and Rosa Montero’s futuristic, Tears in Rain, and Weight of the Heart. Her translations of short stories, essays and the occasional poem have been published in journals and anthologies. She presents sessions at writers’ festivals, gives talks on Spain-related and translation topics, and (co-)organises and participates in visits to Australia by Spanish-speaking writers. In 2016, she was awarded Spain’s Officer’s Cross of the Order of Civil Merit. zhuktranslations.com/; scholars.latrobe.edu.au/lmthwaites

Translator’s Statement

Cuerdas is a significant work because of its subject matter and the quality of Etxenike’s writing. The exploration, discovery, and understanding of who we are, particularly if we exist outside traditional, “accepted”, social and gender roles is a key theme. Relationships (with oneself and others), identity (sexual, gender, and social), and acceptance (of and by self; of and by others) are all highlighted and explored through the main characters. These themes are the source of much contemporary debate and can lead to ostracism and mental and/or emotional breakdown for some, and a sense of belonging and resolution for others.
Etxenike deals sensitively with all these themes using the voices, thoughts and actions of her three main characters (Jon, Linda, Paolo) and a secondary character (Emi). They are linked in a series of unfolding, difficult circumstances, and united by several cuerdas/c(h)ords, strings, and ties.

The novel’s form and content are constructed around the metaphor of tuning the 12 cuerdas or strings of the Portuguese guitar. This image – of dissonant and tuned cuerdas – resonates with the stories of the protagonists, whose lives have a single sombre tone to which, as the plot advances, a second brighter one is added. Cuerdas offers the translator three main challenges:

to present the novel’s themes as sensitively in the translation as they are in the original;

to capture and reproduce the unique voices, and ways of thinking and feeling, of the key characters, who come from varying social backgrounds, have lived in different towns or cities in two countries, and who are still coming to terms with a range of personal experiences and major events in their lives; and

to “reproduce” the deceptively simple, seemingly straightforward and yet complex language and word play at the heart of Etxenike’s writing. Each word and phrase has been carefully chosen, often to convey, multiple meanings. The title of the novel is a perfect example: cuerda can mean string, cord, chord, thread, (skipping) rope; clockwork, wire; sane, sensible… any one of which might be the meaning intended in a particular sentence.

Luisa Etxenike is a highly regarded, award-winning writer from the Basque Country, but to date, only 1 of her works, the award-winning Crossing Waters, has been translated into English. She is the author of 9 novels, 2 short story collections, 1 poetry collection and 3 plays. Several works have won major prizes. She has also translated 5 works by French authors into Spanish and written 2 crime fiction novels under the name Antonia Lassa. Luisa is fluent in French and English, regularly contributes opinion pieces, essays and reviews to various sectors of the media, and teaches various courses connected with writing. She is the Director of canaleuropa.eu, and of the annual international Literary Festival Un mundo de Escritoras. In 2007 she was awarded the Chevalier d’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France). [https://www.luisaetxenike.net/en/

Judge’s Report

There were only 7 entries in the Translation Prize this year, with one entry being an auto-translation. Languages ranged from Spanish to Italian, Polish and Filipino. The three translations from the Spanish language stood out for their professionalism concerning both the English rendition of the original and the sophistication of the translator’s statement. Access to the original was provided.

Since my first forays into literary translation, some thirty-five years ago, my approach has changed—I’d like to think it has evolved! Judging competitions such as this one made me re-think my original approach. So has collaborating with the author.

A good translator is an author’s closest reader. This helps explain why translation has been one of the great apprenticeships for poets down through the ages, and no less today. By reading closely and with productive purpose in mind, one comes to an intimate understanding of how a text works. By understanding the intimate workings of a text, one gets an idea of how such a text can be made. The fact that one works in or into another language, another mindset, to make a new artifact, guarantees that the process is, to the extent that it succeeds, more than merely imitative. Making a new artifact, be it a poem, a short-story or a novel, from any kind of other-language model, must be a creative act, if the act has any value at all. The production of a successful translation necessarily entails reading with particular strategies in mind; one reads with a view to enabling carrying across cultures, ideas and images, rhythms and cadences, tone and emphasis, ambiguity and ambivalence, conviction and meaning. No one reads more closely than the good translator because no one has more exacting task, that of ghosting oneself across language at large.

The excerpts from “Cuerdas”, “Lerna” and “Earth’s Eleventh Application for Admission to the Milky Way Confederation of Intelligent Civilisations Turned Down” exemplify what I mean by a “good translation”. The translators’ accompanying statement is testimony to a close reading that honours the author’s design, artistry and significance, throwing light on the complexity of the writing at stake and the challenges this poses for them as translators and creators in their own right. I selected “Cuerdas” for its impeccable integrity in both interleaved registers.

Highly Commended:

‘Lerna’ by Lilit Thwaites
‘Earth’s Eleventh Application for Admission to the Milky Way Confederation of Intelligent Civilisations Turned Down’ by Kevin Windle and Mario Daniel Martin
‘Waiting Area’ by Christian Jil Benitez
‘We Won’t All Get into Paradise’ by Azja Kulpinska

Past Winners:

2025
- Winner: ‘Jolie’ by Thila Varghese
- Highly Commended: ‘1995 In Buenos Aires’ translated by Judith Mendoza-White
- Commended: ‘Entry No. 9 from My Grandmother’s Autograph Album’ translated by Miriam Wei Wei Lo
2024
- Winner: ‘Informal Abstraction’ by Alison Entrekin
- Second Place: ‘Two Funerals’ by Thila Varghese
- Third Place: ‘The Magic Ring’ by Sian Valvis
- Highly Commended: ‘on the consolation of elegy’ by Dean Gessie, and ‘A Confession to a Murder’ by Noora Bahar
2023
- Winner: ‘Introduction to Darkness’ by Leila S. Chudor – John McGlynn
- Second Place: Bruma by Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida – Alison Entrekin
- Third Place: ‘Buldoser’ by AS Laksana – Pamela Allen
- Highly Commended: ‘Knocker’ from GJAK by Dimosthenis Papamarkos – Sian Valvis
- Highly Commended: Kumo o sagasu (Looking for spiders (and Clouds)) by Kanako Nishi – Allison Powell
2022
- Winner: Great Sertão: Meanderings by João Guimarães Rosa – Alison Entrekin – Alison’s translation will be published by Simon and Schuster, for publication under its alternate title Vastlands: The Crossing, in 2026
2021
- Winner: White Moss by Anna Nerkagi – Irina Sadovina – Irina’s translation of White Moss will be published by Pushkin Press in 2026.
- Highly Commended – Dante: The Faery and the Wizard by Alberta Adji – Alberta Adji
- Highly Commended – Collecting Butterflies by Sergei Aksakov – Kevin Windle
2020
- Winner: 423 colores by Juan Gallardo and Rafael Avendaño – Lilit Thwaites

AAWP & UWRF Emerging Writers‘ Prize for Prose

This prize is offered in partnership with the UBUD Writers and Readers Festival, and is aimed at emerging writers of short fiction.

If you win you will receive: a festival pass to UWRF and accommodation for the duration of the festival (*Terms and Conditions apply, see below). In addition, you will receive fully subsidised conference fees to attend the annual conference of the AAWP. The editors at Meniscus will also consider your work for publication.

Take advantage of this stunning opportunity to celebrate the craft of writing at Southeast Asia’s largest and most exciting literary festival. Be welcomed into the thriving community of writers within the AAWP. Enter your short story and make the most of this generous publication pathway and networking opportunity for emerging writers. Entries should not exceed 3000 words.

Read the full terms of entry here

2026 Winner: ‘8’ by Yanna Papaioannou

Author Bio
Originally from Greece, I moved from Athens to London at 19 and trained in art and dance. For over twenty years I worked as a lead user experience designer for large scale digital projects. Since my mother’s death in 2019 I have been writing a manuscript with creative writing courses at Granta, the Faber Academy and the Creative Hub in Auckland. My flash fiction story Dymphna was long-listed for the 2024 Fish Publishing International Flash Fiction competition. I live by the sea among native bush with my dog Kanella balancing life between London and New Zealand.

Judge’s Report

Reading the entries for this year’s prize was both exciting and demanding. Exciting because there were entries in a variety of genres, including the ‘classical’ short-story, experimental prose, dramatic monologue, speculative fiction and, yes, horror and boy, did I cringe in fear!

Many stories were suffused with a sense of loss, malaise, and solitude focusing attention on personal issues, at times invoking technology as the culprit in human affairs. What has been striking has not been the way that concerns in both the global and personal spheres have appeared again and again as thematic concerns, but in the stylistic approaches that have been used to communicate these. This is something that I took into account when reviewing my longlist of ten pieces, taking a break of five weeks before first reading and re-reading, ascertaining which stories stayed close to my bodymind. All things considered, I chose an experimental text as the winner.

Breath-takingly accomplished, “8” explores a whole world of human experience through the lens of mathematics, magnifying “the union of polarities” at the core of the number 8. The text is a surfeit of invention that I want to call painterly prose poem. It unfolds by accretion in divergent yet complementary directions, canvassing the concept of home in relation to identity, but “the focus keeps shifting” from the idea of belonging to love, freedom, and ultimately eternity with minute attention to language, sensorial detail and feeling.

The choice of the number 8 is brilliant: if you rotate it, you come across the mathematical symbol for the infinite: ∞. Give it substance, and you create a Möbius strip, an image the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan used to define the structure of the unconscious — neither inside nor outside the subject but the very twist that makes “inside” and “outside” generate as appearances. Just as the winning author uses typography to conclude “8” on both an ethical and ontological note:

Because you can’t have one

without the other.

8 always hides

Behind the I.

Highly Commended: ‘Oi’ by Conrad Head

Commended:

‘Mopping Tears for Money’ by Alice Niall
‘Such Brevity’ by Nimrada Silva
‘Everything Will Be Alright’ by Karla Portch

Past Winners:

2025
- Winner: ‘Cats in Canals’ by Andrew Carmichael
- Highly Commended: ‘A Foreign City Called Memory’ by Alice Niall
- Commended: ‘Patience’ by Rebecca Douglas
2024
- Winner: ‘Water Casting’ by Jane Crowley
- Second Place: ‘The Saltbush Variations’ by Linda Atkins
- Third Place: ‘Halahala’ by Lee Hana
- Highly Commended: ‘Survival in a Glass of Water’ by Raluca Comanelea, and ‘Pocketful of Poison’ by Cassandra Cook

AAWP & UWRF Emerging Writers’ Prize for Poetry

Enter your poem in the AAWP/UWRF Emerging Writers’ Prize for Poetry for your chance to win.

Take advantage of this stunning opportunity to celebrate the craft of writing at Southeast Asia’s largest and most exciting literary festival. Be welcomed into the thriving community of writers within the AAWP. Enter your poem and make the most of this generous publication pathway and networking opportunity for emerging writers.

Read the full terms of entry here

2026 Winner: ‘The Knife Song’ – Kevti Desai

Author Bio
Kevti Desai writes poems no one asked for and everyone needs. She is an Australian poet, storyteller and cultural advocate from the hyphen between two worlds, writing about the things we bury, the silences we inherit, and the lives lived in the margins. Her poetry navigates grief, womanhood, belonging and the quiet revolutions of everyday life: resilient, unflinching, necessary. A winner of the Mother Tongue Poetry Fellowship, her work has appeared in several journals such as Overland and Quill Keepers. For Kevti, poetry breaks silences, bridges cultures, and reminds us that we are more alike than different.

Judge’s Report
There was, again, an upsurge in poetry entries this year and a marked increase in the of risk-taking submissions in stanzaic free verse. To my delight, formal experimentation spawned the best poems.

Many poets wrote of relationships and family members. Some also tackled social, religious and political issues. Others wrote succinct “story poems” about illness, grief, injustice and abuse, race and migration.

The three poems that stayed with me over the course of five weeks are “The Knife Song”, “Across the Moss Lime Seas” and “Father Poem” for inventiveness, striking imagery or poignancy of lingering grief.

There were other compelling pieces, especially “Clifftop Echo Point”, “A Suffering Sestina” and “Young Girl Like Me”. It was interesting to see the ways in which free form can be stretched and shaped to enhance the sentiment of each of these poems.

Whether grappling with the strange geographies of belonging, desire, ethics, politics, or compassion, all of these poems are publishable.

A contrapuntal poem in three voices, “The Knife Song” is the winner. Spare yet expressive, it celebrates the visceral power of poetry and its connection to the body, personal history, and the emergence of unconscious fantasies in us all. It blends myth with experience, plain diction with perverse metaphor and fateful enjambment: images that accumulate then sharpen, like a blade. One line can be as heartbreaking as a dream; in another voice it will undermine the language of prejudice, hypocrisy and violence. “The Knife Song” carves up language to explore the emotional integrity of experience and releases the power of imagery in moments of utter surprise.

Highly Commended:

‘Across the Moss Lime Seas’ by Veronica Troup
‘Father Poem’ by Tim Loveday

Commended:

‘Clifftop, Echo Point’ by Catherine Johnstone
‘A Suffering Sestina’ by Nimrada Silva
‘Young Girl Like Me’ by Thirangie Jayatilake

Past Winners:

2025
- Winner: ‘Before the Rise’ by Edward Kus
- Highly Commended: ‘Ice Cream’ Shoshanna Rockman
- Commended: ‘Burnover’ by Taylor Bell
2024
- Winner: ‘Circle Time’ by Joanne Ambrose
- Second Place: ‘After’ by Tim Loveday
- Third Place: ‘The Riddle’ by Leonardo Chung
- Highly Commended: ‘Bark’ by Daniel Tanure Benício, and ‘Learn to Ride’ by Verity Oswin

Chapter One Prize

Have you written a poetry collection, literary novel, short story collection or a hybrid work that crosses genre boundaries? Enter the Australasian Association of Writing Programs’ (AAWP) ‘Chapter One’ competition for your chance to win.

If you win you will receive: a written commendation from AAWP and a letter of recommendation to the University of Western Australia Publishing (UWAP). This ‘tick of approval’ will see your manuscript assessed without delay. You will, effectively, leap to the top of the submissions pile. You will also receive a $500.00 cash prize and fully subsidised conference fees to attend the annual conference of the AAWP (November 2026) where you will be invited to read from your work.

If your full manuscript is as robust as ‘Chapter One’ you may secure a publishing contract with UWAP: http://uwap.uwa.edu.au.

Take advantage of this stunning opportunity. Fast track your writing journey in a fiercely competitive market.

You must be an AAWP member, and you may enter as many times as you like.

Read the full terms of entry here

**2026 Winner: Fled is that Music by G. J. Johnson**

Author Bio:
G. J. Johnson is a Sydney-based writer and pianist. She graduated with First-Class Honours in Piano Performance from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where she began writing fiction. Later, while living between Paris and Normandy, she began her first novel, Fled is that Music.

Judge’s Report:

Employing a structure broadly analogous to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Opus 109, Fled is that Music is a highly engaging narrative about a musical prodigy’s relationship with her parents, teachers, peers, her piano and music itself. It reveals the various, sometimes conflicting tensions she encounters in trying to accommodate these different relationships while maintaining a sense of personal integrity and achieving self-actualisation. With a compelling immediacy, this excerpt from the longer work dramatises the kinds of pressures at work in her life and reveals the enmeshed and troubling issues she is obliged to confront.

Highly Commended: In the Keeping of Women by Meagan Neil

Shortlisted: Rotten Fruits by Elaine Chennatt

Past Winners:

2025
- Winner: Other People’s Children by Lee Casey
- Second Place: The Sweeter by Monique Marani
- Third Place: Making an Artefact by Johanna Ellersdorfer
2024
- Winner: The Taste of Cedars by Anne Hotta
- Second Place: The Elementals by Liz Allan
- Third Place: Un/Common Thread by Meg Dunley
2023
- Winner: The Freelancer – Jonathan O’Brien
- Second Place/Highly Commended – The End of Experience – Martin Kovan
- Third Place – Dear Mutzi – Tess Scholfield-Peters
2022
- Winner – Ordinariness by Gillian Hagenus
2021
- Winner – Linda Godfrey
- Highly Commended – Peter Ramm
- Highly Commended – Katherine Mann
2020
- Winner – Lisa Dowdall
- Highly Commended – Anne Hotta
2019
- Winner – Benjamin Muir
2018
- Winner – Wendy Riley
- Highly Commended Greg Woodlan d
2017
- Winner – Joshua Kemp
- Highly Commended – Melanie Pryor
2016
- Winner – Ruby Todd
2015
- Winner – Luke Johnson

PAST PRIZES

AAWP SLOW CANOE CREATIVE NONFICTION PRIZE

This prize was offered in partnership with Slow Canoe Live Journal (SC), and was aimed at emerging writers of creative nonfiction, whether essay, profile, memoir, article, or hybrid. The prize included a $500 cash prize and fully subsidised fees for the AAWP’s annual conference in November, as well as the opportunity to participate in—and to be considered for publication by—SC! Entries were not to exceed 3000 words.

Last run in 2020.

Past Winners:

2020 Winner: ‘An incomplete archive of blue’ by Dani Netherclift
2020 Highly Commended – ‘Learning to Say Goodbye the Dublin Way’ by Breda Hertaeg
2019 Winner: ‘Marguerite Duras at the Tepid Baths’ by Anna Kate Blair
2019 Highly Commended – ‘The Price of Perfection’ by Helena Gjone

AAWP/UWRF EMERGING WRITERS’ PRIZE

In 2024, this prize became two prizes: one for prose and one for poetry. See the sections above for more details on the current AAWP X UWRF prizes.

This prize was offered in partnership with the UBUD Writers and Readers Festival, and was aimed at emerging writers of fiction and poetry, influenced by the theme of the festival. The prize included a festival ticket to the UWRF and accommodation for the duration of the festival. The winner also received one year’s membership to the AAWP, fully subsidised conference fees for the AAWP’s annual conference in November, and was considered for publication by the editors of Meniscus! Entries would not exceed 30 lines (poetry) or 3000 words (prose.

2023 Winner: ‘The Interview’ – Jake Dean
Author Bio:
Jake Dean writes stories and rides waves on Kaurna Country in South Australia. His short fiction has appeared in The Furphy Anthology, The Saturday Paper, Verandah Journal, Antithesis Journal, The Saltbush Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal and elsewhere. He won the 2021 Microflix Best Writing Award.

Second Place: The Last Sky Whale – Jacob Serena
Third Place: Rapunzel – Let Your Hair Down – Mary Winning
Highly Commended: Orang Bati – Tika Widya
Highly Commended: Kerania Versus the Dream – Vicki Kyriakakis

Judge’s Report:
Among rising sea waters and shrinking land, we look for hope to shore up from dark to light. Judging this year’s UWRF Emerging Writers’ Prize has provided some precious glimmers of hope. I have sailed beyond continents, temporalities and language borders through poetry and short stories and for this, I am grateful. I love the short form – the way it traverses both inner and outer landscapes in a limited quota of words. This year’s entries offered moments of wonder, shock and awe across experimentation, fantasy, realism, grunge, noir and lyricism.

The AAWP/UWRF award is broad in scope, and there was a fascinating variety of stories and poems this year. I had anticipated a glut of pandemic narratives but only two chose to visit that terrain. Instead, there were pieces celebrating family or friends, such as stories that sketched family dynamics, tales of migration, travel and loss, memories of childhood and those that engaged with the natural world.

Unlike past years, many submissions tap into the social and political, rather than the purely personal, many reference the current global environmental crisis in quite sophisticated ways. As was the case last year, one poem made the long list: ‘The Gecko’, which also has an environmental theme. Unfortunately, it didn’t make the cut, but would be publishable with some revisions.

All the stories are powerful, engaging and entertaining; they hold our attention and take us somewhere elsewhere – sometimes out of our comfort zone. In ‘Orang Bati’ and ‘Kerania Versus the Dream’, worlds collude, reminding us that every day necessity often triumphs over the threat of impending danger. The world of ‘Rapunzel – Let Your Hair Down’, though by far the shortest story, simmers with violence and yearning, yet light shines forth through passion and communion with the land. ‘The Last Sky Whale’, by contrast, is a tale of dislocation and grief that plays tricks with genre, time and geography; it is a philosophical tale for our times which stages Benjin-cet’s fall from the sky and its impact on two witnesses. The winning entry, ‘The Interview’, suggests a rising wave of possibility deftly adumbrated in the opening paragraph:

Gaz Garret’s Northern Rivers home was only an hour south of Burleigh. I pretended I wasn’t nervous, but as I neared his property, my arms involuntarily swung the steering wheel into the carpark of a macadamia-themed tourist castle. I sipped coffee by the window, looking towards the highway, and pulled out the folded list of questions I’d printed, which now seemed cringeworthy. ‘What has a life of surfing taught you?’ ‘Why have you eschewed the limelight?’ My eyes moved to those I’d crossed out: ‘What prompted you to disappear? What does one gain?’ I double-checked I’d brought spare batteries for my Dictaphone, and tried to remember why I’d wanted to become a surf journalist.

Though a story in realistic mode, it has surreal overtones, making us uncertain and uncomfortably self-aware. It is an accomplished piece about choice that I commend especially for its structure, imagery, tension, clipped dialogue and ambiguous ending.

I would like to thank all entrants, many of whom shared stories that were deeply personal accounts of love, loss or trauma. It was hard to choose just five, and I had to leave out many stories that were well-crafted, powerful and insightful.

Thank you.

Past Winners:

2022 – Karen McKnight: ‘This is just to say’
2021 – Soudhamini: ‘Ode to Ushas: This Time Let’s Get the Dawn Right’
2021 Highly Commended – Joshua Lee Shimmen: ‘Pups’
2021 Highly Commended – Elizabeth Walton: ‘Calcaneus’
2020 – Nina Winter: ‘Pit Stop’
2019 – Annabel Stafford: ‘Acid’
2018 – Sophie Overett: ‘Sea Wife’
2017 – Andrew Drummond: ‘Song of Shadows’
2016 – Annabel Wilson: ‘Quire’

AAWP/ASSF EMERGING WRITERS’ SHORT STORY PRIZE

This prize was offered in partnership with the Australian Short Story Festival, aimed at emerging writers across Australasia. The prize includes a ticket to the Australian Short Story Festival in Adelaide in November 2023, as well as economy airfares and accommodation for the festival, and also fully subsidised conference fees to the AAWP’s annual conference in November. The winning entry will also be considered for publication in Meniscus. Entries should be no more than 3000 words, and can be in any style or genre.

2023 Winner: ‘In Search of Murakami’ by Alicia Sometimes

Author Bio:
Alicia Sometimes is an Australian poet and broadcaster. She has performed her spoken word and poetry at many venues, festivals and events around the world. Her poems have been published in Best Australian Science Writing, Best Australian Poems, The Age, Griffith Review, Meanjin, Westerly and more. In 2021 she completed the Boyd Garret residency for the City of Melbourne and a Virtual Writer in Residency for Manchester City of Literature and Manchester Literature Festival. In 2023 she has received ANAT’s Synapse Artist Residency and has co-created an art installation for Science Gallery Melbourne’s upcoming exhibition, Dark Matters.

Judge’s Report:
The winner of this year’s competition is an ambitious story that declares its intentions (and literary ancestry) from the outset. In ‘Search of Murakami’ charts an intertextual course through a dreamy Japan that oscillates between detachment and intimacy, mundanity and surrealism, the concrete and the ethereal. Dialogue and description are suggestive of a nascent (or perhaps repressed is closer to the mark) reality forever threatening to tear down the delicate ego defence mechanisms which appear to be keeping the protagonist-narrator from splintering into a thousand shards of oblivion. This is the fine balance the story strikes, treading the line between too much and hardly enough, between excess and scarcity. It’s further testament to the quality of this winning story to acknowledge that either of the runner-up stories could have been awarded first place without so much as a second thought. The quality at the top was very high. At the end of the day though, this was the one that felt most fully realised. Congratulations to the winners – in fact, to all the entrants, as there wasn’t a story in there that didn’t fulfil at least one promise it seemed to be making.

Second Place: Newton’s Cradle – Lisa Moule

Third Place: Number 3606360 – Stephanie Davies

Past Winners:

2022 – ‘The True Light of Day is Constant’ by Catherine Armitage
2022 Highly Commended – ‘The Creek, Running’ by Cat Moore
2022 Highly Commended – ‘Ewe’ by Josephine Browne
2022 Highly Commended – ‘How do you lose a whole person?’ by Katy Knighton
2021 – ‘Video Capture’ by Clare Testoni
2021 Highly Commended – ‘But They Sing Gloriously’ by R. A. O’Brien
2021 Highly Commended – ‘The Group Booking’ by Michelle Prak
2020 – ‘Cockroach’ by Jane Cornes
2019 – ‘Kanreki’ by Anne Hotta
2018 – ‘Fowler’s Bay’ by Margaret Hickey
2017 – Ruth Armstrong (UTS, Sydney): ‘Paper Cranes’

Please note:

Per our Terms and Conditions, as ratified by Arts Law: ‘The entry should be de-identified. The author’s name, or other identifying characteristics, should not appear on the submission. Judging is blind.’.

The AAWP Prizes and Partnerships Portfolio includes a suite of seven prizes informed by binding partnership agreements with our industry and publishing partners, as endorsed by the AAWP Executive Committee of Management. These agreements include tailored models for prize judging. AAWP respects binding agreements with prize partners, and judges who elect to remain anonymous. For consistency across the suite of prizes, AAWP do not publicise the identity of prize judges.

Per our Terms and Conditions, as ratified by Arts Law: ‘The judges’ verdict is final. The judges will not enter into correspondence or discussion about the outcome.’.