The 2017 Newcastle Writers Festival joanne burns Microlit Award

26 Jun 2017

The Newcastle Writers Festival and publisher Spineless Wonders are excited to announce the launch of the 2017 joanne burns Microlit Award. Melbourne writer and academic Cassandra Atherton will judge the competition entries, which are invited from writers across Australia as well as from Australians living overseas. The theme of this year’s competition is ‘time’ and the maximum length of entries is 200 words. The competition deadline is 31 August, 2017.

Now in its second year, this award for microfiction and prose poems honours the work of experimental Australian poet joanne burns, who was the recipient of the prestigious NSW Premier’s Kenneth Slessor Award for Poetry in 2016.

What we are looking for

We are looking for writing that responds imaginatively to the theme of ‘time’. Your take on time may be philosophical or flippant, sage or satirical, cross-cultural or curmudgeonly. You might riff on the many everyday time-based aphorisms – just in time, no time to lose, tempus fugit – or you might take a longer view of time, reflecting on the Anthropocene epoch or time immemorial.

Microlit includes any form of short writing such as flash fiction, prose poem, dramatic monologue, etc. Please note that we do not accept poems with line breaks for this competition.

The maximum word length is 200 and we particularly encourage entries under 100 words in length for installations that suit shorter texts.

Entrants may include up to three entries per submission.

Award categories

There are both national and Hunter Region categories in the NWF/joanne burns Microlit Award. The national category is open to any person residing in Australia and to Australian citizens living anywhere. An entry fee of $10 applies to this category. The Hunter Region category is open to Hunter residents and is free to enter. Both categories will be judged by Cassandra Atherton.

Winners of each category will receive a cash prize of $300 and entries by all finalists will be considered for publication in an anthology, alongside invited writers. Selected entries will be included in Spineless Wonders’ multi-platform storytelling activities, such as the #storybombingNWF18 project, featuring videos and installations at the 2018 Newcastle Writers Festival.