2023 Microlit Award Winners

Judge Cassandra Atherton has selected the winners in the 2023 joanne burns Microlit Awards. The winner of the National category is Marion May Campbell for her entry Ania Walwicz’s Dance and the winner of the Hunter category is Karen Whitelaw for Sea Salt. Both receive a cash prize of $300 and publication in the Play microlit anthology along with invited writers from US and Australia, as well as other award finalists.

The launch of Play by international microlit expert Paul Hetherington will be held at the upcoming Newcastle Writers Festival as part of the Playfulness In Writing panel session on Saturday April 1 from 1:30pm to 2:30pm. The panel, facilitated by Cassandra Atherton, includes Chris Flynn, Beth Spencer and Dave Drayton.

Seven writers from the Hunter region were finalists and will be published in the anthology. They are: Magdalena Ball, Helen Hopcroft, Sarah Iuliano, Brenda Proudfoot, Nell Robertson, Deborah Van Heerkeren, and Karen Whitelaw.

The names of finalists in the National category, as well as invited contributors, can be found on the Spineless Wonders website.

Cassandra Atherton, a leading expert in the microlit form, said she was delighted by ‘the huge number of wonderfully inventive entries that cast new light on childhood, game-playing, playwrighting and, often most impressively, on literary form and uses of language’.

This award honours the work of experimental poet joanne burns and is co-sponsored by the Newcastle Writer Festival and Spineless Wonders.