Thank you to everyone who supported the competition and a huge congratulations to the winners and highly commended writers. Find out more about them and read their winning stories below. You can also read the judges report.
Story
Winner
Rob Johnson is a writer, actor and comedian. He has been published by Overland, Aniko Press, Underground and Audrey Journal, and upcoming in Literatus. He won the 2020 Albury City Short Story Award, the 2018 Hal Porter Short Story Prize and the 2012 Best of Times Short Story Competition, and was shortlisted for the 2015 Hachette Australia Prize for Young Writers. For the stage he has written The Recidivists (Red Line Productions). He lives in Sydney.
Read Evaporate
Highly commended
Belinda Oliver is a writer from the Macedon Ranges. She has a degree in Professional Writing and has been published in the Grieve anthology, Offset Literary Magazine and The Ampersand. She has won the 2019 Wyndham Writing Awards Short Story category, the 2021 Port Stephens Literature Award and the 2021 Daylesford Writers Festival Short Story Competition. Belinda grew up in the Macedon Ranges and lives with her husband, son and two cats.
Read Sunflowers
Highly commended
Emma Rennison is a British-Australian writer with one bionic hip. She loves to tell tales of being human, be it in speculative fiction or memoir. Disability is a common theme, entwined with growing up, parenthood, and how our lives might look in an alternative future. Her short stories have been published in the Newcastle Short Story Award 2021
anthology and RWR’s Short Stories of Science and Space. She was also runner up in The Jennifer Burbidge Prize 2021. You can find her at www.emmarennison.com and Instagram at @emmajrennison
Read Dawn
Poetry
Winner
Sasanki Tennakoon (she/her) is an artist and writer living and working on Darug and Gundungurra Country in the Blue Mountains. Her creative practice is interested in connection, communication and perceptions of truth in how we construct and present them to ourselves and each other over time.
Read Unravelling
Highly Commended
Angela Costi is the author of five poetry collections, including Honey & Salt (shortlisted Mary Gilmore Prize, Five Islands Press, 2008) and An Embroidery of Old Maps and New (Spinifex, 2021). Her poetry has been placed or shortlisted in the Woorilla Prize, Meniscus Award, Microflix Writing Award, Valiant Scribe Prize (New York), and joanne burns Microlit Award. She received the High Commendation for Contribution to Arts and Culture, Moreland Awards 2021. In March 2022, she will be poet-in-residence at the Brunswick Library. She is also known as Αγγελικη Κωστη (among the Cypriot and Greek diasporas) and lives on unceded Wurundjeri land.
Read The Candle Flicker to my Left
Highly Commended
Diana Harley lives in rural NSW and has written many poems and a few childrens’ books. Her latest books for children are “Fantastic Gymnastics”, “Butterflies”, “Underneath the Apple Tree” and “Beetles and Bugs”. She is an avid reader and a chocoholic and loves wedgetail eagles and cloud watching!
Read Entombed
Well done to all the winners.