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Competitions and programs (105)

2024 Jolley Prize Judges

08 January 2024 Written by Australian Book Review

 

Patrick FlaneryPatrick Flanery is the author of four novels, including Absolution (2012), which was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary award, and a memoir, The Ginger Child. He is Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide.

 

 

 

 

 

Melinda Harvey Melinda Harvey is Lecturer in English at Monash University. She has been a book critic for nearly twenty years, with reviews and commentary appearing in major Australian newspapers and magazines including Australian Book Review, The Australian, The Age, and the Sydney Review of Books. She was a finalist in the 2020 Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism.

 

 

 

  

Susan Midalia

Susan Midalia is the author of three short story collections and two novels. Her new book, a collection of micro fiction called Miniatures, is published by Night Parrot Press. Susan also works as a freelance editor and a mentor to emerging writers, and has judged many writing competitions, including the ALS Gold Medal, the West Australian Premiers Book Award and the T.A.G Hungerford Award.

2024 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize

08 January 2024 Written by Australian Book Review

2024 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize

ABR welcomes entries in the 2024 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. The Jolley Prize is worth a total of $12,500 and is for an original work of short fiction of between 2,000 and 5,000 words, written in English. This is the fifteenth time the Jolley Prize has run and it is one of the world’s leading prizes for short fiction.

Status: Open for entries

Prize Money: $12,500 (first prize: $6,000, second prize: $4,000, third prize: $2,500)

Dates: Opens 16 January and closes 22 April

Judges: Patrick Flanery (SA), Melinda Harvey (Vic) and Susan Midalia (WA)

Click here to enter the 2024 Jolley Prize

Before entering

Please read our Frequently Asked Questions and Terms and Conditions.

If you need to contact us, and these documents don’t answer your query, please call (03) 9699 8822 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Previous winners

Subscribers to ABR can read previous prize-winning stories to the Jolley Prize. To read these stories, click here.

If you aren’t a subscriber, digital subscriptions begin at only $10 per month. Click here to become an ABR subscriber.

Judges

This year’s Jolley Prize is judged by Patrick Flanery, Melinda Harvey and Susan Midalia. 

Exclusivity

Entries may be offered elsewhere during the judging of the Jolley Prize. If an entrant is longlisted and has their story offered elsewhere, the entrant will have 24 hours to decide if they wish to withdraw their story on offer elsewhere or from the Jolley Prize. Exclusivity is essential for longlisted stories to remain in contention for shortlisting.

Entry fees

Online entry (current ABR subscriber) – $20
Online entry (standard/non subscriber) – $30*

    • Non-subscribers will receive digital access to ABR free of charge for four months.

Special online entry + subscription bundles

Subsequent entries may be submitted at the subscriber rate:

Online entry + 1-year digital subscription - $100
Online entry + 1-year print & digital subscription (Australia) - $120
Online entry + 1-year print & digital subscription (NZ and Asia) - $200
Online entry + 1-year print & digital subscription (Rest of World) - $220

Please sign up to our free 'Prizes and Programs' newsletter for more information about the 2024 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize.

ABR warmly acknowledges the generous support of ABR Patron Ian Dickson AM, who makes the Jolley Prize possible in this lucrative form. 

2024 Calibre Essay Prize Judges

23 October 2023 Written by Australian Book Review

Amy BaillieuAmy Baillieu is Deputy Editor of Australian Book Review. She completed a Masters of Publishing and Communications at the University of Melbourne in 2011 and holds a Bachelor of Arts from the same university. Prior to becoming Deputy Editor of ABR in 2012, she worked in other editorial roles at the magazine and was Philanthropy Manager from 2011–12. She regularly reviews fiction for ABR and also works as a freelance editor. 

 

  

Shannon Burns (Text Publishing)

Shannon Burns is a freelance writer and member of the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice. He is a former ABR Patrons' Fellow, and has published short fiction, poetry, and academic articles. He is the author of a memoir, Childhood (Text Publishing, 2022).

 

 

 

 

Beejay SilcoxBeejay Silcox is an Australian writer and critic, and was the ABR Fortieth Birthday Fellow. Her literary criticism and cultural commentary appear in national arts publications such as ABR and Times Literary Supplement. Her award-winning short stories have been published at home and abroad. 

23 October 2023 Written by Australian Book Review

Calibre Logo 2021 copy 

ABR welcomes entries in the 2024 Calibre Essay Prize, worth $10,000. The Calibre Prize is open to all essayists writing in English. We seek essays of between 2,000 and 5,000 words on any subject. We welcome essays of all kinds: personal or political, literary or speculative, traditional or experimental. Founded in 2007, the Calibre Prize is one of the world’s leading prizes for a new non-fiction essay.


Status: Closed for entries, judging underway

Prize money: $10,000

Dates: 23 October 2023 – 22 January 2024, 11:59 pm 

Judges: Amy Baillieu, Shannon Burns, and Beejay Silcox


Past winners

Click the link for more information about past winners and to read their essays.

 

FAQs and Terms and Conditions

Please read our Frequently Asked Questions before contacting us with queries about the Calibre Prize.

Before entering the Calibre Essay Prize, all entrants must read the Terms and Conditions.

 

Exclusivity

Entries may be offered elsewhere during the judging of the Calibre Prize. If an entrant is longlisted and has their essay offered elsewhere, the entrant will have 24 hours to decide if they would like to withdraw their essay on offer elsewhere or from the Calibre Prize. Exclusivity is essential for longlisted essays. The overall winning essay will be published in the April 2024 issue, followed by the runners-up.

 

Entry fees

Current ABR subscribers: $20
Standard/non subscribers: $30*

*All non-subscribers will automatically receive four-month digital access to ABR free of charge.

 

Entry + subscription bundles

Entry + 1-year digital subscription: $100
Entry + 1-year print subscription (Australia): $120
Entry + 1-year print subscription (NZ and Asia): $200
Entry + 1-year print subscription (Rest of World): $220

Those who purchase a subscription while entering will be able to submit subsequent entries at the subscriber rate ($20).


ABR thanks founding Patrons Mary-Ruth Sindrey and Peter McLennan for their continuing support for the Calibre Essay Prize. 

2024 Peter Porter Poetry Prize

03 July 2023 Written by Australian Book Review

Australian Book Review is delighted to announce the winner of the 2024 Peter Porter Poetry Prize is Dan Hogan for their poem‘Workarounds’, which was published in the January-February 2024 issue of ABR. This was announced at an online ceremony on 23 January 2024.

First presented in 2005, the Porter Prize is one of the world’s leading prizes for a new poem in English. It is worth a total of $10,000, of which the overall winner receives $6,000.

This year our judges were Lachlan Brown, Dan Disney and Felicity Plunkett. They chose the winner and five shortlisted poems from a field of 1,066 entries. Poets from twenty-one different countries entered the Prize.

The judges said this of ‘Workarounds’:

‘“Workarounds” remains a stunning critique of the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution, in a lexicon that could (almost) be the gibberish of a pre-ChatGPT machine attempting to replicate human thought … but not quite. Amid apparent non sequiturs, the heroically outlandish expressiveness, the absurd sleights and puns, there are moments of challenge to those alert to the fact that this poem may be investing in social critique rather than mere post-LangPo fun.’

2024 Porter Prize Shortlist

The five shortlisted poems were (in alphabetical order):

‘Poem of the Dead Woman’ by Judith Nangala Crispin (NSW)
‘Immigration Triction’ by Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon (WA)
‘Workarounds’ by Dan Hogan (NSW)*
‘Cuttle’ by Meredi Ortega (Scotland/UK)
‘Blagaj, Mostar’ by Dženana Vucic (Germany)

*winning poem

The judges said this of the shortlist:

‘Arriving at this shortlist, each of us was reading for language that was concise and perspicacious, language that arrested our attention in ways that immediately rewarded rereading. In uniquely different ways, each shortlisted poem demonstrates compelling awareness of the function not only of the poetic line but, more broadly, of syntax, grammar, diction and the power relations transmitted therein.’

The shortlisted poems were published in the January-February 2024 issue of ABR, copies of which can be purchased here.

About the shortlisted poets:

 

judith nangala crispin Judith Nangala Crispin is a poet and visual artist of Indigenous and mixed descent, living on unceded Yuin Country on the NSW Southern Tablelands. She has published two collections of poetry, and her verse novel will be released in 2024. Judith won the 2020 Blake prize for poetry and has been shortlisted for various other prizes. She has been commissioned by The National Gallery of Australia, The National Museum of Australia, Musica Viva, and Red Room Poetry. In 2024, a poem Judith wrote about her dog will be deposited on the moon, by NASAs Polaros mission, as part of the Lunar Codex.

 

 

Natalie Damjanovinatalie damjanovich napoleon 290ch-Napoleon is a writer, songwriter, and educator who was raised on a farm by her Croatian-immigrant parents. Her poetry and creative non-fiction have appeared in Meanjin, Cordite, The Found Poetry Review, Westerly, Australian Poetry Journal and Writer’s Digest (US). Natalie’s work has been widely anthologised in both the United States and Australia. She has won the Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize (2018) and the KSP Poetry Prize (2019). Her début poetry collection, First Blood, was released in 2019 (Ginninderra Press). Her second poetry book, If There Is a Butterfly That Drinks Tears, on motherhood in the wake of the Trump presidency, was released in 2023 by Life Before Man/Gazebo Books.

 


dan hogan Dan Hogan (they/them) is a writer from San Remo, NSW (Awabakal and Darkinjung Country). They currently live and work on Dharug and Gadigal Country (Sydney). Dan’s debut book of poetry, Secret Third Thing (Cordite, 2023), won the Five Islands Poetry Prize. Dan’s work has been recognised by the Val Vallis Award, the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, and the XYZ Prize, among others. In their spare time, Dan runs small DIY publisher Subbed In. More of their work can be found at: 2dan2hogan.com.

 

 

 

meredi ortega Meredi Ortega is from Western Australia and now lives in Scotland. Her poems have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, The Poetry Review, Meanjin, The Best Australian Science Writing 2023, and Scientific American. She contributed to the deep mapping anthology Four Rivers, Deep Maps (UWAP, 2022).

 

 

 

dženana vucic Dženana Vucic is a Bosnian-Australian writer, poet and critic currently based in Berlin. Her writing has appeared in Sydney Review of Books, Overland, Meanjin, Australian Poetry Journal, Australian Multilingual Writing Project, and others. She is currently working on her first book and tweets at @dzenanabanana.

 

 

 

 

The shortlist was derived from a longlist of eleven poems.

2024 Porter Prize Longlist

The eleven longlisted poems were (in alphabetical order):

‘Deep Time’ by Paula Bohince (USA)
‘A Christmas Ode’ by Marguerite Bunce (France)
‘Poem of the Dead Woman’ by Judith Nangala Crispin (NSW)*
‘Immigration Triction’ by Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon (WA)*
‘Portals’ by John Foulcher (ACT)
‘Workarounds’ by Dan Hogan (NSW)*
‘Whipbirds’ by Greg McLaren (NSW)
‘Cuttle’ by Meredi Ortega (Scotland)*
‘Bingeing Sestina’ by Petra Reid (Scotland)
‘Blagaj, Mostar’ by Dženana Vucic (Germany)*
‘Have they culled the roadside deer’ by Meredith Wattison (NSW)

*shortlisted poets

Click here for more information about past winners and to read their poems.


To stay updated on the Porter Prize and Australian Book Review’s other prizes, please sign up for our ‘Prizes and Programs’ newsletter.


We gratefully acknowledge the long-standing support of Morag Fraser AM and Andrew Taylor AM and support in memory of Kate Boyce.

2024 Porter Prize Judges

03 July 2023 Written by Australian Book Review

 

Dan Disney REVISED DECEMBER 2022 Im Hyejin Yivadi Studio 150 x 150Dan Disney was the winner of the 2023 Peter Porter Poetry prize for his poem ‘periferal, fantasmal’. His most recent collection of poems, accelerations & inertias (Vagabond Press, 2021), was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award and received the Kenneth Slessor Prize. Together with Matthew Hall, he is the editor of New Directions in Contemporary Australian Poetry (Palgrave, 2021). He teaches with the English Department at Sogang University, in Seoul.

 


Felicity Plunkett NEW 2023 Simona Janek 200Felicity Plunkett is a poet and critic. Her latest work, A Kinder Sea, is published by UQP. Her first collection of poetry Vanishing Point (UQP, 2009) won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize and was shortlisted for several other awards. She has a chapbook Seastrands (2011) in Vagabond Press’ Rare Objects series. Felicity was Poetry Editor for University of Queensland Press and edited Thirty Australian Poets (UQP, 2011). She has a PhD from the University of Sydney and her reviews and essays have been widely published in The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Book Review, Sydney Review of Books etc.

 

 

Lachlan Brown 800x500 monoLachlan Brown is a senior lecturer in English at Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga. He is the author of Limited Cities (Giramondo, 2012) and Lunar Inheritance (Giramondo, 2017). Lachlan has been shortlisted and commended for various poetry prizes including the Mary Gilmore Prize, the Newcastle Poetry Prize, the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, and the Macquarie Fields Poetry Prize. Lachlan is currently the vice-president of Booranga Writers Centre in Wagga Wagga. His poem 'Precision Signs' was shortlisted in the 2020 Peter Porter Poetry Prize.

 

 

 

2023 Calibre Essay Prize Winner and Shortlist

28 April 2023 Written by Australian Book Review

Sydney writer Tracy Ellis is the winner of the 2023 Calibre Essay Prize for her essay 'Flow States'. Her name will be very familiar to ABR readers: Tracy won the 2022 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize for her story 'Natural Wonder'. (She is the first person to win both Calibre and the Jolley Prize.)

The judges – Yves Rees (past winner of the Calibre Prize), Peter Rose (Editor of ABR), and Beejay Silcox (critic and artistic director of the Canberra Writers Festival) – chose ‘Flow States’, the winning essay, from a field of 397 entries. Tracy Ellis receives $5,000 for her winning essay and the runner-up, Bridget Vincent, receives $2,500 for her essay 'Child Adjacent' which will appear in a future issue of the magazine. 

‘Flow States’ begins with a single drop of water – a household tap left running. ‘As any plumber, doctor, or government knows, a little leak is never insignificant,’ writes Tracy Ellis. ‘A dripping hose can fill a swimming pool, a burst artery can drain your life away, a wily hacker can flood the porous, stateless internet with classified information and change the course of history.’ And so, from a single dripping tap, Ellis draws out a tale of the obliterative power – real, existential, and metaphorical – of floodwater.

‘Flow States’ impressed the Calibre judges with its elegance, layered richness, and sharp-eyed observation. It is an essay that invites – rewards – rereading. Part memoir, part cultural history, and part solastalgic elegy, ‘Flow States’ behaves like its subject: it ebbs and whorls. The result is something that speaks to our perma-crisis present, but tells a much older story.

Our 2023 runner-up, ‘Child Adjacent’ considers the culturally slippery responsibilities – and possibilities – of aunthood. ‘I am not the mother,’ writes Bridget Vincent, a writer originally from Ballarat. ‘I am an aunt instead, if “instead” is even the right word. There are categories – infertile, childless by circumstance, childless by choice – and within these, more specific groups like the Birthstrikers, who are publicly delaying procreation until there is climate action. Being an aunt of the Anthropocene is none of these and all of them at once.’

As wry as it is compassionate, ‘Child Adjacent’ impressed the judges with its conceptual freshness. It is an essay that broadens our understanding of family building, and interrogates the terrors and moral exigencies of parenting in the climate crisis. Vincent’s essay does subtle, private things in reverberative ways, which is the mark of an enduring essay.

Tracy Ellis on winning the Calibre Essay Prize:

‘It’s such an honour to be awarded the Calibre Essay Prize. I feel extraordinarily lucky that my essay resonated with the judges. To win on the back of the Jolley Prize brings an immense double happiness. ABR sets a high benchmark with the way they run Calibre and the Jolley. Having worked with Editor Peter Rose and the ABR staff on the Jolley Prize last year, I can testify to their integrity, refreshing lack of cynicism, and genuine respect for writers. These awards and acknowledgements do matter – they help enormously on both a professional and practical level. I’m extremely grateful to ABR, the judges, and Patrons, and give thanks for my good fortune.’

About Tracy Ellis

Tracy Ellis lives in Sydney and works as an editor in digital and print media. She was winner of the 2022 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize and runner-up for the 2022 Writing NSW Varuna Fellowship. She has a Master’s in Creative Writing from UTS.

2023 Calibre Prize Shortlist.

The eleven shortlisted essays are (in alphabetical order):

‘The Dark Side of Paradise’ by Ben Arogundade (UK)
‘Heimat’ by Ina Skär Beeston (UK)
‘Private Leo, My Imaginary Father’ by Kevin Brophy (VIC)
‘The Genealogies of Mr Senior’ by Martin Edmond (NSW)
‘See it Now’ by Jaimee Edwards (NSW)
‘Flow States’ by Tracy Ellis (NSW) - winner
‘The Muse of Potential Motherhood’ by Madison Godfrey (WA)
‘Blade of Grass, Meadow of Knives’ by Dan Hogan (NSW)
‘The Morning Belongs to Us’ by Siobhan Kavanagh (VIC)
‘Stone Country’ by John Stockfeld (VIC)
‘Child Adjacent’ by Bridget Vincent (VIC) - runner-up

 

Calibre Essay Prize:

The Prize, now in its seventeenth year, is one of the world’s leading awards for an original essay. We thank ABR Patrons Peter McLennan and Mary-Ruth Sindrey for supporting the Calibre Prize. 

2023 Jolley Prize Judges

23 January 2023 Written by Australian Book Review

 

Gregory DayGregory Day lives on Wadawurrung tabayl in south-west Victoria, Australia. His work has won many awards, including the 2006 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, the 2011 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story prize, the 2020 Patrick White Award and the 2021 Nature Conservancy Nature Writing Award. Day's novel, A Sand Archive, was shortlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Award. He has a new novel, The Bell of the World, out in 2023.

 

 

 

 

Jennifer MillsJennifer Mills is an author, editor and critic living in Kaurna Yerta (Adelaide). Her novel Dyschronia was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin, Aurealis, and Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature in 2019. Mills’s latest book is The Airways, a queer ghost story set in Sydney and Beijing, published in 2021 by Picador.

 

 

 

  

Maria Takolander

Maria Takolander is a Finnish-Australian writer, reviewer, interviewer, and independent scholar. She is the author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which, Trigger Warning (UQP, 2021), won a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. Maria was also the inaugural winner of the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Competition and is the author of The Double (And Other Stories) (Text, 2013), which was shortlisted for a Melbourne Prize for Literature. Her website is mariatakolander.com.

2023 Peter Porter Poetry Prize Winner

20 January 2023 Written by Australian Book Review

Dan Disney was named the overall winner of the 2023 Peter Porter Poetry Prize at an online ceremony on 19 January 2023 for his poem ‘periferal, fantasmal’.

The Porter Prize – Australia’s most prestigious poetry competition – is worth a total of $10,000. This year’s judges – Sarah Holland-Batt, Des Cowley and James Jiang – shortlisted five poems by Chris Andrews (NSW ), Chris Arnold (WA), Michelle Cahill (NSW ), Dan Disney (South Korea/Australia), and Raisa Tolchinsky (USA). The shortlisted poems were selected from 1,132 entries sent from thirty-four countries. They appear in the January–February issue of ABR.

Congratulations to Dan Disney and to all the poets shortlisted and longlisted in the 2023 Peter Porter Poetry Prize!


In their report the judges noted:

‘A tour de force of linguistic estrangements, “periferal, fantasmal” excavates the colonial history sedimented in the names that litter the landscape of the Gippsland region in Victoria. Through its comic neologisms and deft calibrations of lyric temporality, the poem replays the sanction for mineral extraction provided by exonymic nomination, reminding us of the scotch-soaked nightmare from which we are still trying to awake'.

On learning of his win, Dan Disney commented:

‘Peter Porter opens his poem “Landscape with Orpheus” with an epigraph from The Magic Flute – “You only live once, let that be enough for you!”. Poems like Porter’s generate not only wonder but also awed awareness (and, for me, a shift thereafter towards ethical, experimental rhetoric). I am dazzled to be in the bright reality of a moment like this. It is an incredible honour to receive a prize bearing the name of such a prodigiously enlivening, humanising poet'.


 

periferal, fantasmal

by Dan Disney

Residents in the high country town of Benambra are cautiously optimistic it could be on the brink of another mining boom.

The Weekly Times, 4 August 2022

Angus McMillan is lost (again), bushwhacked
in the eucalypt fastnesses of Yaimathang
space, lolling in the dry wainscots
of a thirsting imaginarium, highlander pre-thief
expeditioneering through the land-folds
of community 100 generations deep
(at least) & parlously drunk (again), wandering
pointy guns through the sun-bright climes
later declaimed as alpine, o Angus, you’re lairy
& hair-triggered as a proto-laird, scratching
exonyms into future
placeholders as effacement, chimeless
as your Caledonia Australis (yeah, pipped at the post
by ‘Gipps Land,’ that howling
strzeleckification), & in the fire-crazed hills
Benambra slouches, heat-struck
descendants squinting beside the vanished
(again) Lake Omeo, where ghosts flop
or palely wade, cascading
generations generating cascading generations
as if contagion, feral as syntax reasserting the mere
bunyipdoms of itself, & I read today
a zinc mining crowd
is bee-lining for the outskirts of town
where the brown farms end, & locals already
yipping in full chant, ANOTHER CHANCE FOR
DOOMSAYERS TO DO
EVERYTHING TO THWART ALL CHANCE
OF THIS MINE RE-OPENING, &
McMillan (dumbfounded, non-finding
founder) is out there, still, looping
in stumbles like a repetition
compulsion through the unheimlich
antipodean sublime, syphilitically
occupied in louche preoccupations (namely,
naming the already-named, the-there-&-known,
uttering under white gums in bullet & bulletin
the Quackmungees of his idylling) & while
Benambra’s locals apply next layers
of sunscreen to the books they’re calling history,
hallooing through firestorm, STAND UP
FOR OUR HERITAGE, in the big wet of his oblivions
McMillan is flat out like a bataluk drinking
amid the squatters & Vandemonians,
Iguana Creek, 1865, it is moments before death
& he’s raising one more scotch
(again) in our direction, scowls into the clamouring
sweep of an existential curtain, falling
(as he is, into the old land’s burr,
the only time you’ll hear him speaking here)
BIODH FIOS AGAIBH AIR UR
N-EACHDRAIDH FHÈIN, A BHURRAIDHEAN.1

1 As per Peter Gardner’s book: ‘historians have tended to recognize the priority of McMillan and posterity has left us with all the names that McMillan conferred on the countryside except one – Strzelecki’s “Gipps Land” instead of McMillan’s “Caledonia Australis”.’ See Our Founding Murdering Father: Angus McMillan and the Kurnai Tribe of Gippsland 1839-1865, page 19. Exonymic renaming is one dimension of colonial effacement; in the generations after British annexation, a polyphony of invading languages systematically intersected the colonies’ landscapes, including McMillian’s Scottish Gaelic. The last lines in this text translate from that language, approximately, as ‘idiots, learn your damned history.’ Elsewhere, other capitalised lines are drawn verbatim from the Facebook group ‘Anyone who has lived in Omeo, Benambra, Swifts Creek or Ensay’. ‘Quackmungee’ is the name of one of the vast areas of land controlled by McMillan, who is recorded in the Colony of Victoria’s 1856 census as owning 150,000 acres. In the Gurnaikurnai language, ‘bataluk’ translates to English as ‘lizard’; so total is the genocidal erasure of Indigenous culture that no record exists for the Yaimathang language group’s word for ‘lizard’. In 1865, McMillan died in Gilleo’s Hotel, Iguana Creek.

_____________

Dan Disney cropped Im Hyejin Yivadi Studio

Dan Disney's most recent collection of poems, accelerations & inertias, (Vagabond Press 2021), was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award and received the Kenneth Slessor Prize. Together with Matthew Hall, he is the editor of New Directions in Contemporary Australian Poetry (Palgrave 2021). He teaches with the English Department at Sogang University, in Seoul. 

Further information

The Peter Porter Poetry Prize is one of Australia’s most prestigious poetry awards.

Subscribe to ABR to gain access to this issue online, plus the ABR archive.

Click here for more information about past winners.

We gratefully acknowledge the long-standing support of Morag Fraser AM and Andrew Taylor AM and support in memory of Kate Boyce.

2023 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize

05 January 2023 Written by Australian Book Review

Australian Book Review is delighted to announce that Rowan Heath is the winner of this year’s ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize for their story ‘The Mannequin’. They receive $6,000. This year’s prize – worth a total of $12,500 – received 1,200 entries from thirty-eight different countries. Uzma Aslam Khan placed second and receives $4,000 for her story ‘Our Own Fantastic’ , and Winter Bel placed third and receives $2,500 for her story ‘Black Wax’

The 2023 Jolley Prize was judged by Gregory Day, Jennifer Mills, and Maria Takolander.  

The shortlisted stories are published in the 2023 August issue (you can purchase single issues here). ABR extends a warm congratulations to Rowan Heath, Uzma Aslam Khan, and Winter Bel as well as to the longlisted entrants (listed below). Thank you to all who entered this year’s prize. 

The shortlisted stories are listed below (in alphabetical order by author surname)

‘Black Wax’ by Winter Bel (France/United Kingdom)
‘The Mannequin’ by Rowan Heath (Victoria)
‘Our Own Fantastic’ by Uzma Aslam Khan (United States)

The longlist for the 2023 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize is as follows (in alphabetical order by author surname):

‘and ever more stranger’ by Emily Armanios (Victoria)
‘Black Wax’ by Winter Bel (France/United Kingdom) - shortlisted
‘Backstory’ by Sue Brennan (Japan)
‘The Mannequin’ by Rowan Heath (Victoria) - shortlisted
‘Our Own Fantastic’ by Uzma Aslam Khan (United States) - shortlisted
‘Older, Younger’ by Kira McPherson (England)
‘Fatal attraction’ by Fope Ojo (Netherlands)
‘Happy At Work’ by Ellen Rodger (NSW)

More information about the longlisted authors can be found below.




The 2023 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize Longlist

‘and ever more stranger’ by Emily Armanios

Emily Armanios is a twenty-three-year-old Greek-Egyptian poet currently writing and living on unceded Wurundjeri land, in beautiful Naarm. She spends her time being awestruck by the terror/tenderness of the exquisite world, in which you'll often find her writing ‘poetry or else’.

Emily Armanios  

‘Black Wax’ by Winter Bel

Winter Bel is a writer of literary fiction and poetry. Born in England, she now splits time between Paris and Los Angeles. She is presently polishing for publication her début novel After The Angels, as well as her short story collection Hard Place Rock, from which story ‘Black Wax’ is taken. Her website is winterbel.info.

Winter Bel - credit Jaimie Kourt  

‘Backstory’ by Sue Brennan

Sue Brennan is an Australian writer with stories published in Australia in ACE - Contemporary Stories by Emerging Writers, Meniscus, Meanjin, and in the USA in The Peauxdunque Review, Big City Lit and The Blue Mountain Review. In 2022, she was the winner of the New Feathers Anthology prose award. She can be found at www.suebrennan.net.

Sue Brennan  

‘The Mannequin’ by Rowan Heath

Rowan Heath is a writer, editor and LARPer living on Wurundjeri land. Their creative work has appeared in In Flux: Trans and Gender Diverse Reflections and Imaginings, Monstrous Appetites, Perspektif, Verge and Antithesis. Their fiction will be published in Strangely Enough, an ASSF anthology, in late 2023. They have edited for publications such as Farrago, Inkspot and CAMP. They currently work in the higher education sector.

Rowan Heath - credit Alice Capstick  

‘Our Own Fantastic’ by Uzma Aslam Khan

Uzma Aslam Khan is the author of five internationally acclaimed novels. These include Trespassing, nominated for a 2003 Commonwealth Prize; The Geometry of God, a Kirkus Reviews’ Best Book of 2009; Thinner Than Skin, nominated for the Man Asian Literary Prize and DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Khan’s new novel, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali, was a New York Times’ Best Historical Fiction 2022. It won the Karachi Literature Festival-Getz Pharma Fiction Prize, and has been longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Awards for 2023. Born in Pakistan and now residing in the United States, Khan has also lived in the Philippines, Japan, England, Morocco, and Oceania. Her website is https://www.uzmaaslamkhan.com

 Usma Khan - credit David Maine

‘Older, Younger’ by Kira McPherson

Kira McPherson is the author of Higher Education, published by Ultimo Press (2023). Her short stories have been published in Westerly, the Stockholm Review of Literature, and the London Short Story Prize Anthology, and she is an associate editor of Short Fiction Journal. She grew up in Perth, Western Australia and lives in London.

Kira McPherson  

‘Fatal attraction' by Fope Ojo

Fope Ojo is a writer from Lagos, Nigeria, who currently lives between Amsterdam and Lagos. She is an alumni of Purple Hibiscus Workshop in Awka, Anambra 2020, Sonic Acts critical writing workshop in Amsterdam, 2021 and the Iceland Writers Retreat, 2023. Some of her work has appeared in Overland, Necessary Fiction, Spread Magazine, Cherry Tree, Ynaija, Irin Journal, Sleek Magazine, Native to name a few. Two of her short stories have been nominated for the Best of Net category in Fiction, and the Pushcart Prize. Her short fiction was also longlisted for the 2020 Commonwealth short story prize.

Fope Ojo  

‘Happy At Work’ by Ellen Rodger

Ellen Rodger’s novella The Girls’ Room was published in Love & Desire, Four Modern Australian Novellas. Her writing has also appeared in The Best Australian Stories and The Age. Her recent short fiction has been nominated for the Newcastle Short Story Award, the Albury City Short Story Award, and the Alan Marshall Short Story Award. Ellen has an MA (Creative Writing) from Western Sydney University.

Ellen Rodger  

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ABR warmly acknowledges the generous support of ABR Patron Ian Dickson AM, who makes the Jolley Prize possible in this lucrative form.