Writers and competitions featured in Award Winning Australian Writing 2011:
(as they appear in the book)

Gemma White is a Melbourne-based poet who creates and edits
Velour magazine. She has been published in Voiceworks,
Page Seventeen and Visible Ink. She had poetry included in
The Green Fuse, the Picaro Poetry Prize's 2010 anthology.
Gemma loves the concept of ragdoll cats and the eye candy
of vintage cars from the 1960s. She is also a connoisseur of
music festivals. For more info, visit onlywordsapart.wordpress.com.

The Picaro Poetry Prize is run by Picaro Press and the Byron
Bay Writers' Festival. The winning poems are featured in The Green
Fuse, an anthology published in cooperation with the Varuna Writers' Centre.
www.picaropress.com

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Will Small grew up in Canberra, and still manages to love it.
Passion for language was bestowed upon him by his mother 
— a librarian and writer herself. Will considers himself primarily
a poet, and was a finalist at the Australian National Poetry Slam
in 2009. 'The Promise' was the first short story Will had ever actually
finished. Will is studying English, philosophy and film studies at the
ANU, and works as a chaplain at Hawker College. He recently asked
a girl to marry him (she said yes). Will's not entirely sure what the
future holds, but hopes it will involve mucking around with language
for a long time to come.


The ANU/Uni Pub Short Story Prize has been offered since 2007,
now in its fifth year. It is very generously funded by the proprietors of
the Uni Pub in Canberra. Open to all students enrolled at the Australian
National University, with free choice of topic, 5000-word limit and a
first prize of $5000, the 2010 competition attracted more than 125
entries. The award panel included Professor Allan Hawke
(the immediate past ANU Chancellor), Professor Penny Oakes
(Dean of Students), Vic Elliot (immediate past ANU Librarian)
and representatives of Uni Pub.

www.anu.edu.au/dos/competitions_events.htm

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Theresa Layton is an emerging writer who lives in Canberra. Her
short story 'The Other Side' was published in Award Winning
Australian Writing 2010. She has won the Perilous Adventures Short
Story Competition two years running, and won the Common Thread
Long Short Story Competition in 2011. She is currently working on a
collection of short stories.

Theresa wishes she could hold a tune, grow tomatoes and tell a good joke.


The Perilous Adventures Short Story Competition is an annual
competition for short stories up to 5000 words in any genre.
The competition's focus is on recognising and rewarding writers of
outstanding short fiction, and supporting them in further developing
their profile and career. The prize is announced each year during the
Brisbane Writers Festival. Prizes include publication and mentorships.
More information is available at 

www.perilousadventures.net.

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Amy Espeseth was born in rural Wisconsin in 1974 and immigrated to
Australia in 1998. She holds a Master of Arts in creative writing from the
University of Melbourne, where she is a sessional tutor and PhD student.
Her fiction has appeared in various journals,and she received the Felix
Meyer Award for Literature in 2007. Amy's first novel, Sufficient Grace,
was awarded the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished
manuscript in 2009 and will be published by Scribe in 2012. An extract
from her second novel, Trouble Telling the Weather, won the QUT
Postgraduate Creative Writing Prize in 2010. Amy is the new publisher
at Vignette Press. Continuing Vignette's sub-cultural journal series
including Sex Mook and Death Mook, Geek Mook is scheduled for launch
in late 2011. She lives in Footscray.


The QUT Creative Writing Prizes offer $2000 each for the first-place
winners of the Postgraduate and Undergraduate categories. In addition
to the cash prize, Highly Commended certificates are awarded to all
shortlisted candidates, and the final entries are published in the annual
QUT Creative Writing and Literary Studies journal, Rex. Entries may be in
the form of a short story, creative nonfiction, a literary or professional
writing essay, or poetry. Submissions are limited to 3000 words of prose
or 50 lines of poetry.

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Kirk Marshall is an emerging Brisbane-born, Melbourne-based writer.
He has written for more than sixty publications, both in Australia and
overseas, including Wet Ink, Going Down Swinging, Voiceworks, Verandah,
fourW, Mascara Literary Review, Word Riot (USA), 3:AM Magazine (Paris),
(Short) Fiction Collective (USA), The Seahorse Rodeo Folk Review (USA)
and Kizuna: Fiction for Japan (Japan). Kirk was the first-prize recipient
of the 2010 Booranga Prize from Charles Sturt University for Best Short
Story. He edits Red Leaves, the English-language / Japanese bilingual
literary journal. Kirk's debut short-story collection, Carnivalesque: And,
Other Stories, will be published by Black Rider Press in October 2011.


The Booranga Prizes, one for fiction and one for poetry, are awarded
each year for the best short story and poem in the current issue of fourW,
the annual anthology of new writing and graphics published by fourW
press, out of Charles Sturt University's Booranga Writers' Centre.
The competition judges are comprised of the fourW editor and the
selection panel. The School of Humanities and Social Sciences at CSU
funds the prizes, worth $250 each.

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Tasha Sudan comes and goes from Ulladulla on the south coast of
New South Wales. She spent four years in residential training at the
Zen Mountain Monastery in the Catskill mountains of upstate New York,
which began as a Zen arts training centre. She has worked as a radio
journalist and recently in screenwriting. She is currently in residence at
Toshoji, a Soto Zen temple in the mountainous Okayama prefecture
of central Japan, where she was ordained a monk in September 2010.


The Blake Poetry Prize is a national award, now in its fourth year,
offering a cash prize of $5000 for a new poem that best explores
the religious or spiritual. The prize, named after the visionary poet
and artist William Blake, is non-sectarian and encourages Australian
poets to write a new work of up to 100 lines displaying a critical
awareness of, or sympathy for, the concepts of religion or spirituality.

The Blake Poetry Prize is presented by the New South Wales Writers'
Centre and Blake Society, with the generous support of Leichhardt
Municipal Council.

www.blakeprize.com.au/galleries/the-blake-poetry-prize

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Keren Heenan is a part-time teacher of the Arts living in Melbourne.
She has been awarded the Hal Porter Short Story Competition 2010,
the Southern Cross Literary Competition 2009, and the Ellen Gudrun
Kasten (short story) Award 2007. She has been published in Overland,
Island, Wet Ink, and in other Australian magazines and anthologies.
She is a member of Io Writers' Groupand is currently working on a novel.


September 29, 2011 marked the twenty-seventh anniversary of
Hal Porter's death. To celebrate his literary life, the East Gippsland
Art Gallery and the Hill of Content Bookshop launched the eighteenth
Hal Porter Short Story Competition, with a national prize of $1000
for the winner and book prizes and certificates for shortlisted stories.
The competition has been sponsored by the Hill of Content Bookshop,
Community College East Gippsland, Collins Booksellers (Bairnsdale),
East Gippsland Newspapers, East Gippsland Institute of TAFE, and
Porters Electrical. It is also auspiced by the East Gippsland Art Gallery
(EGAG) and supported by the University of Queensland Press.
For more details, contact founder and organiser Peter Millard via
pedrom53@bigpond.net.auor visit the EGAG website at
www.eastgippslandartgallery.org.au.

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Jacqueline Winn lives on a farm at Possum Brush on the Mid-North
Coast of New South Wales, Australia. When she's not busy with cattle
and goats, vegetables and fruit trees, she writes short stories, novels,
poetry and scripts. She has won awards for short stories and poetry
in Australia, New Zealand and UK. Many of her stories have been
published in anthologies and literary magazines in Australia, UK and
Ireland. She has two collections of short stories: Once More with
Feeling and Salt & Pepper, published by Ginninderra Press.
More about Jacqueline and her work at www.jacquelinewinn.com.


Each year, beginning in 1991, the Banjo Paterson Writing Awards
have been held to honour the great Australian
writer Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson. The awards are launched
on the anniversary of Banjo's birth (17 February) and close in April,
with winners announced in June. The awards are run by the Orange
City Council, Central West Libraries, and Central West Writers' Centre,
supported by the Central Western Daily and ABC Central West Radio.
There are cash prizes to be won, and the winning short story entry is
published in the Central Western Daily. There is an entry fee of $10
for adults and $5 for children per submission, and entry forms are
available from Orange City Library.

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The majority of Janeen Samuel's published works have had
titles such as 'The normal oral flora of the mouth of macropods'.
When she is not getting enough work as a veterinary pathologist,
she tries her hand at fiction instead of fact, and some of the results
have been published in various magazines and anthologies.
In 2010 she had stories published in the anthology Shades of
Sentience and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine No. 44.
She lives in South West Victoria.


The Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre is run under the
auspices of the Katharine Susannah Prichard Foundation Inc. It is
located in the Perth Hills, in the former home of Katharine Susannah
Prichard, the internationally celebrated author of Coonardoo,
Working Bullocks and many other novels, stories and plays.
The centre encourages and facilitates services for writers at all
levels of the craft. The Katharine Susannah Prichard Short
Fiction Awards have two sections: the Open Awards, and the
Mundaring National Young Writers Awards (for entrants twenty
years old and under). 
kspf.iinet.net.au

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Ray Tyndale started writing poetry and literary fiction in the 1990s
when studying for her MA in creative writing at the University of
Adelaide, and has continued to publish all manner of words while
gaining her doctorate. There are always women in her writing,
although they are rarely young. Ray is multi-skilled and has led
many lives, all of which enrich her several books. Farmwoman and
Sappho at Sixty are her latest works, both published in 2008.


The Salisbury Writers' Festival Writing Competition is run as
part of the Salisbury Writers' Festival, a joint project between the
City of Salisbury, SA Writers' Centre and the Salisbury Library Service.
The competition is open to South Australian residents in two categories:
Aged 17 and over; and Aged 16 and under. Prizes amount to
$1200 across both categories, and winners are announced during
the festival, held in August each year.
www.salisbury.sa.gov.au/Our_City/Events/Salisbury_Writers_Festval

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Joan Fenney's award-winning poetry has been published in
newspapers, magazines and journals throughout Australia. Her
first poetry collection, Marilyn Monroe by the Brooklyn Bridge and
Other Portraits, was published by Ginninderra Press in 2009.
Joan's poetry is also included in a number of anthologies including
That Which My Eyes See (2011) and Season of a New Heart (2010).
Joan has been a journalist for more than twenty-five years in both
electronic and print media. Joan's love of the written word has
even resulted in her and her husband opening a second-hand
bookshop in Adelaide.


The 2010 Poetry Unleashed Festival was the fifth biennial poetry
festival conducted by the City of Onkaparinga and the SA Writers'
Centre, with the support of a number of partner organisations.
The festival's aim is to raise the profile of South Australian poets,
their work and poetry within the community. The festival provides
entry points for people of all ages, reading and writing abilities
through a range of mostly free events in traditional and non-traditional
arts venues throughout the city. The Open Poetry Competition in
2010 was renamed the Adrian Kavanagh Prize in honour of the
festival's first organiser. 

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Adam Tucker studied film and photography at ECU in Perth, and
writing and editing at RMIT in Melbourne. His short fiction has
appeared in anthologies and collections such as Block, Verandah,
Visible Ink and Pendulum. He lives in Brunswick and is currently
learning how to be a builder and a father.


The Australian Literature Review (AusLit) regularly runs short story
competitions throughout the year. The AusLit Rural/Small Town
Short Story Competition, for the best story with a rural or
small-town setting, was part of a round of three competitions:
Best Rural/Small Town Short Story, Best Realistic Horror Short Story,
and Best Adventure Short Story. As winner of the Best Rural/Small
Town Short Story Competition, Adam Tucker received feedback
on his story from rural novelist Fleur McDonald and a $250 book voucher.
www.auslit.net

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Sarah Holland-Batt has lived in Australia, the United States,
Italy and Japan. Her first book, Aria (University of Queensland Press),
was awarded the Arts ACT Judith Wright Poetry Prize, the Thomas
Shapcott Poetry Prize, and the FAW Anne Elder Award, and was
shortlisted in both the New South Wales and the Queensland Premiers'
Literary Awards. She is the recipient of the Marten Bequest Travelling
Scholarship, an Australia Council Literature Residency at the B. R. 
Whiting Studio in Rome and, as of late 2010, is the W. G. Walker
Memorial Fulbright Scholar at New York University.


Founded in 2009, The Adelaide Review / University of Adelaide
Creative Writing Program Short Fiction Competition represents
a collaboration between The Adelaide Review and the University of
Adelaide's Creative Writing program. Each year it attracts some 400
entries from every state in Australia and a dozen or more countries
internationally. Since its inception, the competition has also enjoyed
the support of the National Arts Council of Singapore, assisting in
raising the profile of short fiction writers in South East Asia. Senior
competition judges Brian Castro and John Coetzee are joined each
year by a guest judge — in 2009, Olive Senior, and in 2010,
Gail Jones. Winning entries each year are published in The
Adelaide Review and on its website. For more details,
contact:shortfiction@adelaidereview.com.au.

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A. R. Holloway is an Adelaide-based writer who has devoted
herself to writing fiction since 2006. She writes novels and short
stories, dabbling in articles and poetry when the mood takes her.
Her first novel, a noir mystery, was a semi-finalist in the 2010
Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The short story 'When Billy
Went Beetroot' won first prize in the 2011 Wyong Writers 'Not to
Be Taken Seriously' Short Story Competition, and has since been
published in Signatures No. 7, Winter 2011.


An autonomous branch of the Fellowship of Australian Writers,
Wyong Writers meet in the Wyong Senior Citizens Centre in the
grounds of Wyong Old Primary School. They hold competitions,
including the 'Not To Be Taken Seriously' Short Story Competition,
to encourage writing, and publish anthologies of members' work.
The 2011 competition received seventy-five entries.

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Brent Beadle grew up in New Zealand and has lived in Australia
for the last twenty-odd years. Brent thinks the short story competition
is a 'very cool' way to be involved in Mardi Gras, and has entered the
Mardi Gras Short Story competition for three years in a row. His entry
last year, under the pseudonym Bettina Brentano, was subsequently
published in Flaunt 3, number three of the lesbian-ebooks series.
Recent unpublished tales include 'Star Man', 'The Lord's Good Work',
'The Skipping Rope', 'Warts and Piss' and 'Glassed'. His works thus
far have been autobiographical and seldom untrue.


The Mardi Gras Short Story Competition is a national competition
for members and friends of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
queer and intersex community. For the sixth year in row, organisers
New Mardi Gras included this competition in the Sydney Gay & Lesbian
Mardi Gras festival with the support of The Bookshop Darlinghurst,
The Feminist Bookshop, gay-ebooks, lesbian-ebooks, Gleebooks,
NSW Writers' Centre and Sydney Writers' Centre. 

The theme of the 2011 competition was 'Home', which authors
were free to interpret in any way they wished. Winning entries were
presented as part of Mardi Gras's Queer Thinking program.

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John Hale is, among other things, a writer who lives south of Hobart,
Tasmania, with his sternest critic, a wisely spotted dog. He has
travelled extensively under various guises. He is in his ninth decade.


The Terri and Hal Moore Poetry Award is an annual competition run
by FAW Tasmania. The name of the award honours past members
who made a significant contribution to FAW Tasmania and is supported
by the Moore family. Poems or a suite of poems of up to 60 lines are eligible.

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David Campbell is a Melbourne writer who has won numerous awards
in recent years for short stories and poetry (both traditional and free verse).
He has contributed to three poetry books for children, and in 2007
published Skycatcher, an anthology of original Australian bush verse,
and Morning Light, a collection of prize-winning short stories. His writing
has been published in a number of books and magazines, including
Best Australian Stories 2005 and Award Winning Australian Writing
2009 and 2010.


The Bondi Writers' Group Short Story Competition accepts stories
of any theme of 1500 to 3000 words. No entry form is required, but there
is an entry fee of $5 per entry. First prize is $200 while second prize is $50,
and results are to be published in Writers Voice. Bondi Writers gratefully
acknowledges the grant from Waverley Council that makes this short story
competition possible.
www.bondiwritersgroup.org.au

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Irene Wilkie's work has appeared in many anthologies and journals
including: Blue Dog, Poetrix, Idiom 23, fourW eighteen, Five Bells,
Going Down Swinging, Broadkill Review USA, Australian Reader, Divan
and the Henry Lawson Festival of the Arts Anthology. Her first book was
Love and Galactic Spiders (Ginninderra Press), and her second book of
poetry is now complete. Irene is an inaugural member of The Kitchen
Table Poets, Shoalhaven, who as a group produced the anthology Tangents,
which includes the poetry of the seven members. Irene has read her poetry
at Shoalhaven poetry festivals at the Shoalhaven Arts Centre in Bundanon,
and at the South Coast Writers Centre as a featured reader. Her thanks go
to Chris Mansell for a mentorship some years ago and to Varuna for a
poetry masterclass.


The first Henry Lawson Festival of Arts was held on the June long weekend
in 1958, and it has continued every year since to commemorate the birth of
Henry Lawson in Grenfell. The festival aims to promote and attain recognition
for aspiring Australians in various fields of arts such as verse, story, art,
photography and television. Entries close for the Verse and Short Story
competitions in March each year. Verse is limited to 48 lines and short
stories to 2000 words. Entries vie for the total prize of $3725, with a
statuette awarded for the best entry.
www.grenfell.org.au/henrylawsonfestival

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Kirilee Barker is a Brisbane-based writer. She holds a creative writing
degree from Queensland University of Technology. Having written her first
fantasy epic on the back of several Post-it notes at the age of six, she
wonders whether fantasy is in her blood and, if so, whether that's entirely healthy.


Presented by Express Media, The John Marsden Prize for Young Australian
Writers is open to poets, short fiction writers and novelists under twenty-five.
It has been running since 2004 and is judged by John Marsden himself.
All winners are published in Voiceworks or on the Express Media website,
and share in a $5500 prize. The closing date is in August each year.
For more information, visit
www.expressmedia.org.au.

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Denis Bastion writes YA fiction and enjoys experimenting with short stories.
Shortlisted for the John Marsden Prize in 2009, he won the 2010 Katharine
Susannah Prichard Open Prize for Speculative Fiction. In 2011 he worked on
his YA urban fantasy novel and on completing his BA in literature and history.
He also hopes to study a Masters in education in 2012. Denis facilitated the
Vermont Writing Group for two years, and remains a firm believer in community
within the industry. He believes nothing can replace the magic of a good book,
literature being a platform for inspiration, discussion, reflection and positive change.


The Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre is run under the
auspices of the Katharine Susannah Prichard Foundation Inc. It is
located in the Perth Hills, in the former home of Katharine Susannah
Prichard, the internationally celebrated author of Coonardoo, Working
Bullocks and many other novels, stories and plays. The centre encourages
and facilitates services for writers at all levels of the craft. The Katharine
Susannah Prichard Speculative Fiction Awards have two sections:
the Open Awards, and the Mundaring National Young Writers Awards
(for entrants twenty years old and under).
kspf.iinet.net.au

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Jenny Toune graduated from the TAFE Advanced Diploma of Professional
Writing program with the Outstanding Achievement Award in Poetry,
and she has had short stories, poetry and arts reviews published in
Australia and the USA for the past five years. She was also a South 
Australia State Poetry Slam Finalist in 2008 and 2010. She has written
and performed a tap dance/spoken word show as a featured artist at
Melbourne's Overload Festival 2009 and at REBELSLAM!, Murray Bridge
2010, and is currently torn between performing in her spoken word/dance
shows and finishing her manuscript.


Friendly Street Poets (FSP) is Australia's longest-running community
open-mic, uncensored poetry reading and publishing group in the
Southern Hemisphere. Started on 11 November 1975 by Andrew
Taylor, Richard Tipping and Ian Reid, FSP was Adelaide's first regular,
open-to-all poetry reading. It has since achieved local, national and
international recognition for its dedication to the nurturing, support
and promotion of poetry.

REBELSLAM! is the only registered International Poetry Slam event
in Australia. It began in 2008 and is held monthly.
friendlystreetpoets.org.au

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David Blissett is a Sydney-based business writer for
Mission Australia, and works as a volunteer writer for the Taronga
Conservation Society and the Australian Home Education Association.
He also writes novel-length and short-story fiction. His novel
manuscript Vertigo Gingko Fineto was shortlisted in the 2008 New
Holland Publishers and NSW Writers' Centre Genre Fiction Award.
His short story achievements include winning the Bundaberg
Writers Association Short Story Award in May 2010, winning the
Hawkesbury River Writers Prose Competition in September 2010,
and making the shortlist in the 2010 Alan Marshall Short Story competition.


The Hawkesbury River Writers meet at 7pm on the first Thursday
of each month at the Mooney Mooney Club on the Hawkesbury.
The Hawksbury River Writers Prose Fiction Competition is
open to short stories of any theme and genre to a maximum of
1000 words. First prize is $100 and second prize is $50, with
certificates of commendation awarded at the judges' discretion.
For further information, contact Alan Michie: alanmichie@gmail.com.

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Janine Mikosza is a Melbourne-based writer. 'Flight' won the
My Brother Jack Literary Festival Sunflower Bookshop Short Story
Award in 2010. Her short stories have appeared in Etchings and Wet Ink.


The My Brother Jack Literary Awards are run by the
Glen Eira City Council with the support of Allen & Unwin, the Baha'i
Community of Glen Eira, Eastend Booksellers, Hardie Grant Egmont,
Ilura Press and Sunflower Bookshop. The Awards offer prizes in Primary
(prep to grade six), Junior Secondary (years seven to nine), Senior
Secondary (years ten to twelve) and Open categories, which are
announced at an annual awards ceremony in October. It is open to
people who live, work or study in the City of Glen Eira, and entries
must be unpublished and not have previously won any awards.
There is no theme, genre or style restriction for any category in
the My Brother Jack awards.

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Kevin Gillam is a West Australian poet with two books of poems
published, Other Gravities (2003) and Permitted to Fall (2007),
both by Sunline Press; and has a volume forthcoming with Fremantle
Press in July 2011. He has also had poems published in numerous
journals and anthologies, including Best Australian Poems and
The Best Australian Poetry. He works as Director of Music at Christ
Church Grammar School in Perth.


The Reason-Brisbane Poetry Prize was established in 2004
as part of the Words in Winter Celebrations that are held each
August in towns across the Hepburn Shire in Victoria. It is
named in honour of Len Reason and Jeff Brisbane, two local
men who loved poetry and life.

In 2010, the competition, initially for Victorian residents only,
was opened to all Australian residents. It is now one of the most
lucrative poetry competitions in Australia. The prize is generously
sponsored by Joy Brisbane, a published poet and author;
her aim is to encourage and nurture the talent of both new
and established poets.

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Llywela Williams was born in central Queensland and later
moved to Melbourne, where she completed an arts/law degree
and a PhD. During her studies she lived for lengthy periods of
time in Germany and Russia, and is now happily ensconced in
Adelaide with her German partner and three young children.
She is currently trying to improve her piano playing, volunteers
for several environmental organisations, and is eco-retrofitting
their 1960s house. The Campbelltown Literary Award is the
first short story competition she has entered.


The Campbelltown Literary Awards are run by the Campbelltown
City Council and are open to previously unpublished pieces that have
a specific reference to the City of Campbelltown, capturing its experiences
and culture. Entry conditions and results are made available on the City
of Campbelltown website. The theme for the 2010 awards was
'Reflections on Water'.
www.campbelltown.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=2000

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An Adelaide poet, Elaine Barker has had two collections published:
The Windmill's Song (Wakefield Press, 2003) and The Day Lit by
Memory (Ginninderra Press, 2008). High Heels and Tartan Slippers
will be published by Ginninderra at the end of the year.


Friendly Street Poets (FSP) is Australia's longest-running community
open-mic, uncensored poetry reading and publishing group in the
Southern Hemisphere. Started on 11 November 1975 by Andrew
Taylor, Richard Tipping and Ian Reid, FSP was Adelaide's first regular,
open-to-all poetry reading. It has since achieved local, national and
international recognition for its dedication to the nurturing, support
and promotion of poetry.

The 2010 Satura Prize was judged by highly acclaimed Dutch film
director, writer and producer Rolf de Heer.
friendlystreetpoets.org.au

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Hugh Kiernan has been writing for over twenty years and has
published pieces on childhood, school life, the workplace,
sport, family life and illness. He has published a children's book
on photography and co-edited an anthology of stories by writers
in his local area at the time, the Yarra Valley. Hugh now lives in
Melbourne, where he continues to write in the memoir genre.


The Cancer Council of Victoria Arts Awards is an uplifting
program created as a means for people touched by cancer
to share their experiences creatively through writing, art and
film. It generates the hope that we will find a cure for cancer.
Entrants include cancer patients, survivors, carers and those
who have lost a relative or friend. In 2010 the theme for the
competition was 'Lost and Found'.
www.artsawards.com.au

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Kate Gilbert lives in the Hawkesbury with too many relatives
and animals, stealing time to work on short stories for children
and adults, memoirs, and children's novels. Kate's stories
have won awards and commendations in Australia and
overseas. She has wanted to be a writer since learning to
read, and has scribbled stories and poems ever since.
She is a daydreamer and a night-owl who loves dusk, coffee,
yakking with friends and walking on the beach. Kate Shelley
is the name she uses when writing for children.


The Scribbli Gum website was set up in 2007 with the joint
efforts of Ruth Strachan, Robyn Gosbell and other voluntary
assistants, all commonly known as Twiggy Branch. They were
looking for works that were cameos — small and fine,
well-crafted — whether in prose or poetry. Gum Leaves
is the prose section of this endeavour, closing annually on
31 October. It seeks works of fiction or nonfiction, of any
theme, from 200 to 1000 words. Winning entries are
published online and there is a small cash award. Other
competition run by Scribbli Gum include Gum Nuts and
Gum Blossoms, both of which are open to poetry.
Details can be found at scribbligum.com.

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Christopher Green was born in the United States and moved
to Australia at the age of twenty, after meeting his wife on the
internet (she wasn't his wife at the time). His fiction has appeared
in Dreaming Again, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Abyss & Apex,
and has won an Aurealis Award and the Australian Horror Writers
Association Short Story Competition. He lives in Geelong with his
wife and their two perpetually muddy labradors. He is currently
writing a zombie novel and posting one chapter every weekend
at www.arizonaafterwards.com.


The Australian Horror Writers Association (AHWA)
Flash and Short Story Competition started in 2005 and now
runs every year. It is open to unpublished stories only. The
judges look for well-written tales that make them think and
give them goose bumps. The competition has two categories:
Flash Fiction (1000 words or fewer) and Short Story
(1001–8000 words), with the winner of each category
receiving paid publication in Midnight Echo, the official
magazine of the AHWA. 
www.australianhorror.com

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Cecilia Morris is co-author of three published books on human
relations, as well as two anthologies of poetry: one published by
Poetry Monash, and another with her mother (also a poet) through
grants from Bayside Council. She has had several poems published
in journals including Quadrant, and won the Bayside Poetry Prize in
2009 with 'Everday Gardener' and first prize in the Poetica Christi
Press competition this year with 'Earthly Ending'. She facilitates a
group of poets in Bayside called Coastlines. Her poetry reflects
her interest in nature, the sea and the ever-changing complexities of life.


Poetica Christi Press runs the Poetica Christi Press Annual
Poetry Competition from 1 August till 31 October every year
on a given topic. The entries are given to the judge who selects
a winner and a runner-up, as well as another twenty-three
entries to go into an anthology to be published the following year.
Some of Poetica Christi's past anthologies have been commended
in the FAW awards, and its 2009 bestselling coffee-table book
Reflecting on Melbourne, which included colour photography and
artwork alongside poetry, was shortlisted for the 2010 Caleb Prize. 
www.poeticachristi.org.au

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Josephine Rowe is a writer, editor and semioccasional teacher.
Her poetry, fiction and nonfiction have been published in Best
Australian Stories, Best Australian Poems, The Griffith Review,
Overland, Island, HEAT, Dumbo Feather, The Lifted Brow and
The Age. Her collection of short stories, How a Moth Becomes
a Boat, was published in 2010 by Hunter Publishers.

She is a participant in the 2011 International Writing Program
at the University of Iowa and is currently working on a new
short story collection, to be published by UQP in 2012.
For more, please visit josephinerowe.com.


The Australian Book Review's Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize
honours the late Australian writer Elizabeth Jolley. Entries should be
single-authored stories of between 2000 and 5000 words,
written by Australian citizens or permanent residents. Results
are announced in October, and the winning story will be
published in the October (Fiction) issue of ABR. First prize is
$5000, and three shortlisted stories each receive $1000
and a copy of the publication. 

The guidelines and entry form are available from 
www.australianbookreview.com.au/prizes/elizabeth-jolley-story-prize.

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Louise D'Arcy is a writer based in Yackandandah, north-east Victoria.
She has been writing for fifteen years and has had more than thirty stories
published. In 2005 her first novel, Harry Gets a Life, was shortlisted
for the HarperCollins Varuna Publication Award, and in 2007 she was
shortlisted in the Canadian '3-Day Novel' competition for her novel
The Weekend. In 2009 she won the Albury City Library Short Story
competition for the second time with 'Happy Birthday', and in 2010
she won The Age Short Story Competition with 'Flat Daddy'.


The Australian Literature Review (AusLit) runs short story competitions
throughout the year. The AusLit May Short Story Competition was
part of a round of three competitions run in March, April and May:
Best March Short Story (theme: suspense), Best April Short Story
(theme: teen/young adult) and Best May Short Story (theme: troubled
family relationship). As winner of the May Short Story Competition,
Louise D'Arcy received feedback on her story from authors Michael
White, Rebecca James and Bernadette Kelly, along with a Kindle eReader.
www.auslit.net

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Liz Winfield's poetry has been published in journals and literary
magazines in Australia, the UK and Ireland. Her first collection,
Too Much Happens, was published by Cornford Press in 2003
and was written with the assistance of a grant from Arts Tasmania
in 2000. Her second collection is the chapbook Catalogue of Love,
published in 2006 by Walleah Press. Liz coordinates the Republic
Readings, Hobart's monthly poetry reading, and teaches creative writing.


The Norma and Colin Knight Award is an annual competition
run by FAW Tasmania and open to all FAW members. The name
of the award honours past members who have made a significant
contribution to FAW Tasmania. Poems of up to 40 lines are eligible.

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Amanda J. Spedding's stories explore the darkness of the human
soul. Her fiction has been published in Andromeda Spaceways
Inflight Magazine (ASIM), Shades of Sentience, Tasmaniac Publications
and Pill Hill Press. She is a freelance editor and proofreader,
Committee Member for the Australian Horror Writers Association
(AHWA), and Field Correspondent for Innsmouth Free Press. Amanda
lives in Sydney with her amazingly supportive husband and two very cool kids.


Shades of Sentience explores our world and all the different levels
of perception and experience with which it is perceived, presenting
articles and fiction that sees beyond what is expected to reveal all
the strange, beautiful oddities of existence. 

The Shades of Sentience Steampunk Short Story Competition
was open to residents of Australia and New Zealand, and offered
$200 in prize money and the chance to be published in Shades
of Sentience. It is the first step in a battle of the two great punk
genres, with 'Cyberpunk' as the theme for next year's competition.
sentientonline.net

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Eleanor Marney was born in Brisbane, and has lived in Indonesia,
Singapore and India. She has been awarded for her adult short stories,
and her work has been published in Award Winning Australian
Writing 2009 (Melbourne Books), and in the upcoming horror anthology
Box of Delights (Aeon Press). At the moment, between parenting,
she is working on teaching high school students, writing the second
book in a junior adventure series, and completing a YA crime thriller.
She lives on ten acres near Castlemaine, Victoria, with her partner,
four young sons, an excess of chickens, and a dog.


Australia's only crime writing competition for women,
Sisters in Crime's Scarlet Stiletto Awards are Australia's
most lucrative crime-writing competition for either gender.
Top prize is the HarperCollins first prize of $750 plus the
coveted trophy, a scarlet stiletto shoe with a steel stiletto
heel resented the awards with Dr Sue Turnbull of
La Trobe University. Submplunging into a perspex mount.
The 2010 competition attracted 145 entries, and Nadine
Garner, star of City Homicide, pissions close in late August each
year, with an entry fee of $10.

'Tallow' was originally published in Scarlet Stiletto:
The Second Cut (Clan Destine Press, 2011). The book was
launched by Tara Moss as part of the 2011 SheKilda Again –
Australian Women Crime Writers' Convention, celebrating
Sisters in Crime's twentieth anniversary.
www.sistersincrime.org.au

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K. A. Nelson is a former public servant and adult educator
who lives in Canberra. She grew up in country New South
Wales, has a BA in English literature and drama from
UNE, spent ten years living and working in the Northern
Territory (last century), and writes part-time.


The Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and
Emerging Poets, sponsored by the Malcolm Robertson
Foundation, is Australia's most prestigious award for
emerging poets. It offers annually a major prize of $5000
and publication in Overland magazine, plus two smaller
prizes. The award is open to Australian poets who have not
yet had a collection of work commercially published — that
is, by a publishing house with a commercial distribution.
The prize usually opens for entries in September and closes
in mid-November — but check www.overland.org.au for
specific details.

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Murray Middleton is a 27-year-old writer who lives
in Melbourne. He recently won The Age Short Story
Competition and is reputed to have wept upon learning
the news. He has also been published in Verandah. He
currently works at Debney Park Secondary College with
high-functioning autistic children. An autistic student
recently described him as 'one of those humour people'.
He weighs 64 kilograms and has always put writing before
sustenance. Despite his moderate success with the critics
and failed sales, Murray persists, almost on a Sisyphean
scale; the battler as writer if ever there was one.


By entering The Age Short Story Competition, you'll raise
the profile of your work, attract critical attention, and
move closer to being published. The competition is run
in conjunction with the international writers' association
PEN. The first-, second- and third-place winners each
receive $3000, $2000 and $1000 respectively, and are
published in the A2. They are published on theage.com.au
along with all highly commended entries.

For further information, contact Jason Steger on
jsteger@theage.com.au.

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Gillian Essex completed a Diploma of Professional Writing
and Editing in 2009, and now works as a freelance writer
and editor. She has been published in Best Australian Stories
2010 and Award Winning Australian Writing 2010. She also
writes nonfiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in the
travel section of The Age and in the literary magazine 21D.


'On the Hill' is an annual one-day festival that celebrates
the delights of life in Panton Hill. It features live music,
food and loads of entertainment. The Panton Hill 'On the
Hill' Short Story Competition is an open competition
accepting entries of no more than 1000 words.

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John Biggs, a fifth-generation Tasmanian, spent much of
his professional life in Hong Kong, which gives his writing
a Sino-Tasmanian flavour. He has published several awardwinning
short stories and four novels: The Girl in the Golden
House, a love story complicated by the politics of post-
Tiananmen Hong Kong; Project Integrens, a sci-fi that won
an award in the Jacobyte Fiction Competition; Disguises,
in which an Australian-born Chinese girl clashes with
her traditional parents; and Tin Dragons, which enters the
Chinese mining camps in nineteenth-century Tasmania.


The Jacqueline Cooke Short Story Award is an annual
competition run by FAW Tasmania and is open to all
FAW members. The name of the award honours the the
significant contributions made by Jacqueline Cooke, a
former president and newsletter editor of FAW Tasmania.
Short stories of up to 2500 words are eligible.

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Luke Carman self-identifies as an anti-folk monologist with
epigrammatical tendencies. His work has been described as
'published' by several close friends, and his current project
focuses on whatever gets him through the night. Working
closely with Professor Ivor Indyk of the University of Western
Sydney, Luke hopes to enter a state of semi-isolation in order
to produce something slightly more entertaining than the
Colossus of Rhodes. His work has haunted the journals
HEAT, Westside and Cultural Studies Review.


ZineWest is an annual zine for new Western Sydney writers
published by the New Writers' Group Incorporated,
a group committed to promoting writing in Western
Sydney. The editors seek short submissions from a range
of genres: short story, poetry, drama, memoir, lyrics, comic
and cartoon. The co-sponsor of the ZineWest Competition
is the Writing and Society Research Group of the University
of Western Sydney, led by Professor Ivor Indyk (Giramondo Press).
The Research Group appoints a judge to name prize winners
from the entries selected for publication by ZineWest
editors. The first edition appeared in 2007.

www.nwg-inc.com, zinewest.blogspot.com

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Louisa John-Krol is a recording artist and published
writer, with internationally acclaimed albums (mostly
on the French ethereal label Prikosnovenie) inspired by
mythology, literature and faerylore. Born in 1966 and
raised in Bendigo's bushland, she gained qualifications
at the University of Melbourne. Her experience includes
teaching, storytelling and singing in such festivals as the
Royal Melbourne Show, Trolls et Legendes (Belgium) and
Faerieworlds (USA). She recently completed a fantasy
novel, The Legend of Elderbrook, set to carry music. Her
poem 'Twenty Ways to Greet a Tiger' won South Australia's
2010 C. J. Dennis Poetry Prize.


The winners of the C. J. Dennis Literary Awards are
announced during the C. J. Dennis Festival, held annually
in Auburn, South Australia, on the second weekend in
September. The winners of each category receive $200 and
a certificate. The theme for the 2010 competition was 'The
Year of the Tiger', commemorating the Chinese Lunar
Year and celebrating the tiger as a symbol of greatness. The
awards are organised by Peter Lane, who can be contacted
on peter.lane4@bigpond.com.

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Fiona Britton is a Sydney writer. She was a 2009 recipient of
an Australian Society of Authors mentorship to develop her
fiction work. She has had a poem shortlisted in the Blake
Poetry Prize and she was the 2010 winner of the Shoalhaven
Literary Award.


The aims of the Shoalhaven Literary Award, which began in
1999, continues to be the recognition of literary excellence
and the enhancement of the image of Shoalhaven as a place
of strong cultural development. The competition is open
to all residents of Australia aged eighteen and over. It is
sponsored by The Shoalhaven City Council Arts Board,
FAW Shoalhaven Regional, and Bundanon Trust. The
judge for 2010 was Kate Llewellyn, author of the bestselling
The Waterlily: A Blue Mountains Journal and Playing With
Water: A Story of a Garden, and co-editor of The Penguin
Book of Australian Women Poets.

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Jennifer Shapcott is the author of the novel The Art of
Resistance, published in 2010. She grew up in Melbourne
and studied Japanese history in Canberra and Tokyo. Her
short stories have received several awards. She is currently
working on her second novel and a collection of short
stories. She lives in Canberra.


The Marjorie Graber-McInnis Short Story Award was
established by Don McInnis to commemorate the life of
his wife, a short story writer who lived in Canberra
and passed away on 25 September 1997. The award is
administered by the ACT Writers' Centre and closes each
year on the anniversary of Marjorie's passing. First prize is
$600 and publication in the ACT Writers' Centre magazine,
ACTWrite. The 2010 competition marked the award's
thirteenth year.
www.actwriters.org.au

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Kate Rotherham is a social worker who lives in northeast
Victoria with Roo and their delightful gaggle of small
children. She writes when normal people are asleep. Her
short stories have been published in journals, magazines and
anthologies including Best Australian Stories 2011,
Award Winning Australian Writing 2010, Island,
Page Seventeen, and fourW. 'A Favourite Sky'
was written in memory of her friend Greg.


The Rolf Boldrewood Literary Awards honour Rolf
Boldrewood, the pen name of Thomas Browne, who during
his time as a police magistrate in Dubbo wrote Robbery
Under Arms, one of the first major Australian novels. The
competition aims to foster the writing of prose and poetry
with an Australian content. Prose entries must be no more
than 3000 words, while those for poetry have a limit of
80 lines. The winners of both sections receive $500 and
a signed, limited-edition bust of Rolf Boldrewood (valued
at $100).

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The mining town of Broken Hill, where Jacqui
Merckenschlager lived as a child, instilled in her a love
for the Australian outback, its flora and fauna. This love
is evident in much of her writing and helped develop her
green thumb. She is a retired teacher and is respected as
a self-taught botanist and plant propagator. 'This Empty
Space' was written for a friend whose husband died in a
farm accident. The poem is Jacqui's second Eyre Writers'
Awards success. Her 2009 Tom Black Memorial prizewinning
poem 'Mining Town Pianist' considers a woman
coping in a 'man's town'.


The Eyre Writers' Awards, run by Eyre Writers, are open
to short fiction, essay, memoir, rhyming and non-rhyming
poetry set to a maritime theme, fact or fiction. First prize
is $200 in each section. For more information, contact
Dennis Lightfoot on lincoln5606@hotmail.com.

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Leah Swann lives in Melbourne with her husband and
two children. She is a former public relations manager and
journalist. She loves listening to stories and poetry, and
is writing a novel. Her first book, Bearings, a collection
of short stories and a novella, was published this year by
Affirm Press.


The Page Seventeen Short Story and Poetry Competitions
are held annually, with entries accepted during April, May
and June. Winning and shortlisted entries are published in
Page Seventeen, a magazine founded in 2004 to give new
writers an opportunity to see their work published. Page
Seventeen encourages those with little or no publishing
history to submit their work for consideration, as well as
those with more writing experience.
www.pageseventeen.com.au

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