Competitions, Awards & Opportunities
The ACT Government offers an ACT Book of the Year Award for excellence in literature, valued at $10,000 for the winner, $2,000 for any highly commended book and $1,000 for each shortlisted book. The Award aims to support the development of ACT-based writers, promotes writing in the ACT, and contributes to a positive writing culture for the ACT.
The Peter Porter Poetry Prize is one of Australia’s most prestigious prizes for a new poem. The Prize – open to all poets writing in English – is named after the great Australian poet Peter Porter (1929–2010).
The aim of the ACT Publishing Awards is to recognise, reward and promote writing by ACT region authors that has been published by small publishers or self-published. The Awards are administered by the ACT Writers Centre, in recognition of the excellent writing published locally.
The Anne Edgeworth Writer’s Fellowship is provided to an emerging writer in the Canberra Region. The Fellowship is worth up to $5,000 and is to be used to advance the recipients’ development in the craft of writing.
The Arts Queensland Poet in Residence Program is designed to develop Queensland’s poetry culture by providing a residency for a high-profile poet or spoken word artist to engage directly with Queensland poets and poetry community in a meaningful and collaborative way.
Inspired by the Catholic Church’s long-standing tradition as a patron of the Arts, the ACU Prize for Poetry has established itself since its inception in 2013, as one of Australia’s most prized poetry awards. The Prize has as its aim the simple goal of supporting the emergence of new and dynamic Australian poets and poetry.
The black&write! Writing Fellowships are offered annually to two Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writers. The fellowships include a prize of $10,000, editorial development and publication opportunities.
The Blake Poetry Prize challenges Australian poets to explore the spiritual and religious in a new work of 100 lines or less. It runs alongside the Blake Art Prize and the major prize is $5000.
Open to all Australian writers of commercial fiction, offering the chance to win a publishing contract with HarperCollins, with an advance of $15,000. Two runners-up will each receive a written assessment of their manuscript from HarperCollins.
The annual Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards affirm the quality of some of Australia’s most creative people and provide a boost to their capacity to devote time to their craft.
A new award for middle grade fantasy and science fiction authors.
With prize money of $100,000, the ARA Historical Novel Prize gives Australian and New Zealand historical novelists the chance to be recognised in a class of their own, with the most significant prize purse for any genre-based prize in Australasia.
The Age Book of the Year Awards are annual literary awards presented by Melbourne’s The Age newspaper.
The winner of this award receives a cash prize and publication of the winning manuscript by Wakefield Press. The award recognises the importance of new writing to a vibrant literary culture. Part of the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature.
The 2021 Blacktown Mayoral Creative Writing Prize is open to adults and children who live in Blacktown city. Entrants will write a short story or poem responding to the theme of The only way is… The total prize pool is $1,600.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.