About the prize

This annual competition encourages excellent and original short fiction by new writers of up to 3000 words in length. At a grand first prize of $6000, it is a coveted annual fiction award for new writers in Australia. There are also two runner-up prizes of $1000. All three winners will be published in the spring issue of Overland.

For the purposes of this competition, ‘new or emerging’ describes a writer who has published no more than one book with commercial distribution. (That is, writers who have no books, or who have published one book are eligible; writers with two books or more are ineligible. If you are the author of several chapbooks or books with small print runs, you can contact us to confirm eligibility: overland@vu.edu.au.

You may be interested to read the 2017 judges’ report and the winning stories. Or the 2016 judges’ report and the winning stories.