joanne burns Microlit Award finalists announced

Judge Cassandra Atherton has announced the finalists in the 2023 joanne burns Microlit Awards in which eight writers from the Hunter region have been named. They are: Magdalena Ball, Helen Hopcroft, Sarah Luliano, Brenda Proudfoot, Maddox Quinn, Nell Robertson, Deborah Van Heekeren, and Karen Whitelaw.

Entrants were asked to respond to theme of ‘play’ and all finalists will be published in the Play anthology. 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 Newcastle Writers Festival and Spineless Wonders. Winners of the national and Hunter categories will be announced at the program launch of the 2023 Newcastle Writers Festival on 16 February.

The Play anthology will be launched at the 2023 Newcastle Writers Festival by renowned poet Paul Hetherington on 2 April.