For this first issue of Meniscus for 2026, poets and stories approach ideas of grief, estrangement, ageing, and the fragile work of connection: between parent and child, between partners, between the living and the dead, or between the self and a world that has become unfamiliar. Even when the settings are domestic or ordinary, many of the stories in particular open onto something more unsettling, uncanny, speculative, or darkly comic.
Read Volume 14, Issue 1 of Meniscus, here.
This issue includes scholarly contributions by Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington on ekphrastic poetry; Ekaterina Pechenkina, Carolyn Beasley and Julian Novitz on new models of creative writing workshop; Delia Falconer on mentorship; Jenny Hedley on depression diaries; Seth Robinson on imagining the end of the world; Jenny Hedley, Gareth Morgan, Stayci Taylor and Jessica Wilkinson on form; and Delia Falconer with Sarah Holland-Batt on models to inform the new Australian Poet Laureateship.
We review books by Nigel Krauth, Loribelle Spirovski, David Stavanger, Juliet A. Paine, Julia Prendergast, Phil Brown, Anna Donaldson and Matt Shank, Matthew Hooton, Barrina South, Siang Lu, and Benjamin Sheppard et. al.
New creative writing on writing in this issue includes work by Duc Dau, Belinda Rule, Diwakar Gautam, Stephanie Green, Md Mujib Ullah, Marshall Moore, Ryan O’Neill, Jane Downing, Caitlin Burns, Christos Constantine, Ian C Smith, Lauren Pitt, Julia Prendergast and Nikki Wong.
Read the full edition via the TEXT website.
The American Association of Australasian Literary Studies (AAALS), together with the American Australian Association, welcomes submissions to our annual creative writing competition between 1-31 March 2026.
We invite entries in the following categories:
With the generous support of the American Australian Association, the winner of each prize will be awarded US$1000, plus publication in the journal Antipodes.
Further details about eligibility and submission requirements are available here: https://aaals.org/antipodes/, with submissions accepted through the Antipodes portal during March 2026: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/antipodes/submission_guidelines.html.
In our call for papers for this special issue, we solicited submissions of/about all modes of life writing that consider experiences, relationality, and intersubjectivity beyond the human. We posed the following questions to our potential collaborators:
• How do we write the abundance of more-than-human and nonhuman life in which we situate our own?
• What forms emerge when lives aren’t coded via anthropocentric timelines?
• How might anthropogenic climate change prompt urgent new forms of life writing that exceed and entangle human subjectivities?
As the essays and creative works within this special issue attest, such questions were only a partial list of possible lines of enquiry when it comes to life writing beyond the human. But all of these lines of enquiry are underpinned by a desire to undo the myth of human superiority.
Guest editors: Briohny Doyle & David McCooey
The Australasian Association of Writing Programs’ suite of writing prizes are back for 2026 and are open now. Keep reading for all the details.
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
Enter the AAWP & RWP Novella Prize here
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
Enter the AAWP & Westerly Magazine Life Writing Prize here
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
Enter the AAWP & Express Media Sudden Writing Prize here
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. Entries must be accompanied by a ‘Translator’s Statement of Intention’ (up to 400 words) addressing the aims of the translation.
Read the full terms of entry here
Enter the AAWP & UWRF Translators’ Prize here
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
Enter the AAWP & UWRF Emerging Writers’ Prize for Prose here
Enter your poem in the ‘AAWP/UWRF Emerging Writers’ Prize for Poetry for your chance to win.
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 poem and make the most of this generous publication pathway and networking opportunity for emerging writers.
Read the full terms of entry here
Enter the AAWP & UWRF Emerging Writers’ Prize for Poetry here
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
Enter the Chapter One Prize here
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 focused Prizes email list? Email us at prizes@aawp.org.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
For more information about the AAWP Prizes—including past winners and publication updates—visit this page on our website.
‘The second issue of Meniscus for 2025 features writers from around the globe composing short fiction, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry and experimental works exploring and expressing aspects of being human, being in society, and being in the world. Some pieces deploy humour, some are manifestly tragic, some are imagistic and highly evocative. A surprising number of the contributions hone in on what it is to live with, or care for, someone with a serious illness (cancer and dementia being at the front of the line). Others pick up on how we live in both natural and built environments; on families, meals, and memories; on how our collective and individual pasts inform our present; and—perhaps inevitably—on conflict, and the corrosive nature of contemporary politics. As a set of prose and poetry works, they show how deeply satisfying is writing that combines sharp observation, a grasp of writing techniques, and a deep sense of empathy.
Also in this issue are the winning works from this year’s prizes offered by the Australasian Association of Writing Programs in partnership with the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival including the winning entries of the Emerging Writers’ for Prose, Emerging Writers’ for Poetry, and the Translators’ Prize. Congratulations to all who were shortlisted too, whose writing is well worth the reading.’
—Jen Webb, Deb Wain and Sarah Giles, editors
Read the latest edition via the Meniscus website here.
The new issue of Meniscus is crammed with poems and short stories and flash fiction, all of them reflecting the imaginations, voices and observations of writers who are doing what writers do: translating the world into text. The writers published here hail from across the globe: from the Americas, the UK and Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. They hold various identities, bring various levels of prior experience in writing, and work their genres in a multitude of ways. This stunning range of experiences and contexts mean they produce a kaleidoscopic swirl through the possibilities of language, the multiplicities of ways of telling, and the performativity enabled by creative writing, thinking and practice.
Read the latest edition via the Meniscus website here.
The American Association of Australasian Literary Studies (AAALS), together with the American Australian Association, welcomes submissions to our annual creative writing competition between 1-31 March 2025.
The competition invites entries in the following categories:
· Poetry
· Creative Prose
· Indigenous Writers Poetry
· Indigenous Writers Creative Prose
With the generous support of the American Australian Association, the value of these prizes has been increased. The winner of each prize will now be awarded US$1000, plus publication in the journal Antipodes.
Further details are available here: https://aaals.org/antipodes/, with submissions accepted through the Antipodes portal during March 2025: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/antipodes/submission_guidelines.html.
There are just ten days left to submit your entries for one of our seven prizes for writers and translators, brought to you by AAWP and our prizes partners.
The deadline for all prizes is June 30.
Do you create work that lives in the category of: short story – poetry – hybrid writing – translation – under 25 writer work – creative nonfiction – manuscript chapter – novella? There’s a prize waiting to receive your entry.
These amazing prizes offer recognition and exciting opportunities for the winners, but every entry gives you invaluable experience in polishing and putting forward your best work.
For full details of all prizes, head to: https://aawp.org.au/news/opportunities/
And to enter, head to: https://meniscusliteraryjournal.submittable.com/submit
Deadline: Monday 22 April 2024
TEXT editors are calling for paper abstracts and creative EOIs for a December special issue of the journal. The theme of the issue is “Writing from the Fringes”, and possible subject matter includes (but is not limited to) the following:
· Written perspectives from writers of colour
· Writers challenging neo-liberalism and patriarchy
· Writing from the shadow/y land of Gothicism
· Writing and reading Aboriginal Gothic literature/stories
· Writing to challenge/subvert gender stereotypes
· Writing and reading from positions of neurodiversity
· Writing and reading from positions of disability
· Thoughts and perspectives on reconfiguring Australia’s literary “canon”
· Writing through/about trauma and pain
· Writing through/about personal “hauntings”
· Writing through/about racism
· Writing through/about experiences of dislocation
· For love or money? Writing through socio-economic hardship
· Writing about diaspora and the immigrant’s/migrant’s experience
· The margins as a liminal space (place): What is happening there?
· (Re)writing history/perspectives from historical narratives, suppression, and oppression
· Exploring relationships with the more-than-human world (through written work)
· Writing that uses other englishes and/or languages other than English in English-based writing
· Writing from/through translation.
Abstract Submissions
Abstracts for scholarly papers should be 200 words and sent to the editors at textsifringe@gmail.com with the subject line: “EOI for Scholarly Submission”.
Final scholarly papers would be 6,000 to 8,000 words, per TEXT guidelines (including endnotes).
EOIs for Creative Submissions
EOIs should be sent to the editors at textsifringe@gmail.com with the subject line: “EOI for Creative Submission”.
Creative EOIs should include a 200-word synopsis/description of the proposed work and its relation to the special issue’s theme, as well as a 200 to 300 word- (10 to 20 lines) creative sample.
Final prose works would be 2,000 to 3,000 words or a conventional equivalent for script-based works. Poem sequences of up to 80 lines (500 words for prose poems) are also welcome.
The deadline for scholarly paper abstracts and creative EOI submissions is Monday 22 April.
