Competitions, Awards & Opportunities
The Queensland Literary Awards celebrate and promote outstanding Australian writers. State Library of Queensland proudly manages the awards in collaboration with sponsors, industry partners and the writing community.
The Department of English at the University of Sydney invites women poets to submit their collection of poems to Australia’s richest poetry prize, the Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award. The winning manuscript will be published by Vagabond Press.
The Lane Cove Literary Awards is a prestigious national writing competition organised by Lane Cove Council that recognises writing excellence and fosters Australian writing talent.
The Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) celebrate the achievements of authors and publishers in bringing Australian books to readers.
Right Left Write is run in conjunction with Queensland Writers Centre’s weekly newsletter, Pen & Pixel. Each month we announce a prompt word or theme in Pen & Pixel, then it’s over to you to create a short story of up to 500 words and right, left, write. Members can enter for free and non-members can enter for a $5 fee. One entry per person per month.
Scriptable is Queensland Writers Centre’s program for emerging script or screen writers, whether just out of university/film school, still completing a degree, or just looking to enter the industry. Giving writers the opportunity to submit their manuscript, be assessed, participate in a workshop, and potentially be matched with an industry mentor, the idea is to form longer standing relationships with these industry mentors that reach far into the future.
Part of the Northern Territory Literary Awards. Entries open to original works of short fiction or a single poem by a person aged 12 to 18 years as of 1 January 2021 – up to three poetry entries per person with a 300-line limit or a short story up to 3000 words
Once a year, one writer is selected for the Flinthart Residency, getting the chance to spend 10 weeks working full-time on their next project at a dedicated space in the Queensland Writers Centre offices in the State Library of Queensland. They will be awarded a stipend and 15-hour mentorship with an industry professional to support them during their residency.
Now in its seventh year, the Richell Prize is again open to unpublished writers of adult fiction and adult narrative non-fiction.
In honour of historical novelist, Elizabeth Jane Corbett, the HNSA is offering the chance for a previously unpublished author from Australia or New Zealand to receive a mentorship with Wendy J Dunn to develop a completed first draft of an unpublished historical fiction manuscript for young adults.
Have a daunting project but no support? Queensland Writers Centre’s Fishbowl Residency provides the writing space, mentorship and assistance for one lucky writer to complete a draft of their work. Over this ten-week residency, the successful resident works from our offices and shares their progress with our members. Applications are accepted all year round and are open only to current, financial members of Queensland Writers Centre.
Make your work a published bestseller by building your author brand, marketing and business strategy. In this program, get your book ahead in the literary market by building your author brand, digital marketing and business strategy. Walk away with marketing content, a concept website and all the publishing resources needed to make your book a published bestseller. This intensive course is an absolute must for any author with an unpublished manuscript.
Every two years, the team at Hardie Grant Egmont opens the Ampersand Prize and puts out the call for manuscripts by unpublished writers. The Ampersand Prize aims to find brilliant debut novels by writers of young adult and middle-grade fiction.
An initiative of the Heraldry and Genealogy Society of Canberra (HAGSOC), the competition is an opportunity for family history enthusiasts to share their writing, and is a forum to foster the preservation of family history research through stories.
Each year, ten outstanding writers are selected to receive $15,000 each to develop their work. They are matched with a mentor and will work closely with them on bringing their writing to life, connecting them with peers, publishers and readers.
Adaptable seeks material for film or television adaptation. Open to writers across Australia and New Zealand, the contest accepts any genre, fiction or non-fiction, published or unpublished. Queensland Writers Centre also identifes several early career unpublished/emerging writers to pitch their work to screen creatives, with these writers receiving mentorship and advice prior to the pitching sessions.
A prize of $1000 will be awarded to a book that is not only an outstanding work of fiction but excels at increasing the awareness and developing the understanding of history in children.
The Allen & Unwin Crime Fiction Prize is open to all unpublished full-length manuscripts in the crime or thriller genres written by residents of Australia and New Zealand
Each year, the Australian Society of Authors awards a two-week residential fellowship to a writer under the age of 35 who is as yet unpublished.
The Copyright Agency offers Fellowships for Australian writers and visual artists to create significant new works. Fellowships are available for Australian writers who have achieved some success and critical acclaim with their writing and who have a publisher interested in publishing the intended work.
The AIATSIS Stanner Award is presented biennially to the best academic manuscript written by an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander author. Open to all Indigenous authors, scholars and academics.
This award is for an emerging ACT region writer. Entries must be between 1,500–3,000 words. First prize is $600. The winning short story and up to three highly commended stories may be published in an issue of the ACT Writers Centre magazine.
Each year the Williamstown Literary Festival is delighted to convene the Ada Cambridge Biographical Prose Prize, Poetry Prize and The Young Adas which are named after one of Australia’s finest colonial writers, Ada Cambridge.
The CA WestWords Western Sydney Emerging Writers Fellowships offers 3 Fellowships of $4,000 each to emerging writers from the Greater Western Sydney region.
The Age Book of the Year Awards are annual literary awards presented by Melbourne’s The Age newspaper.