Category: Short story competitions

Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

2019 Newcastle Short Story Award now open

Entries for the 2019 Newcastle Short Story Award are now open! This award boasts over $6000 in prizes with the winner taking away a sweet $3000. So, what do you have to do? Well, the award is open to people 18 years and over and all you have to do

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Furious Fiction November 2018 winner and shortlist

Attention shoppers – it’s time to announce the winning story and shortlist for November’s Furious Fiction! This month’s criteria were: The story had to take place at a supermarket. The story’s first sentence had to contain just two words. The story had to include something breaking. When you have a

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Furious Fiction October 2018 winner and shortlist

Drum roll please…it’s time to announce the winning story and shortlist for October’s Furious Fiction! This month’s criteria were: The story’s title had to be “The Lost Hour”. The story had to include a sentence with three colours in it. The story had to include the sentence/phrase “it was lighter”.

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Our 30 favourite 30-word stories

Creative challenges are a great way to unblock your imagination and just switch gears to help focus on other tasks. So that’s why we recently decided to give you a simple enough one – to use the image above as your prompt to write a story containing no more than

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

30-word story challenge

Completing regular creative challenges is a brilliant way to unblock your brain and get your imagination firing. In fact, it’s one of the reasons we started our Furious Fiction earlier this year. So today we thought we’d have some more fun. See that comic book image above? We’d like you

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Furious Fiction September 2018 winner and shortlist

It’s time to announce the winning story and shortlist for September’s Furious Fiction! Over 700 entries came in to land this month, each one needing to address the creative criteria: The entire story must take place in an airport. The story must include the word SPRING somewhere. (Plural also okay.)

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Win $5000 in the 2018 ELLE magazine short story competition

The ELLE writing competition is back!   This is your chance to write a short story, get published AND win $5000. From the ELLE Website: “For this year’s ELLE Writing Competition, in association with Hachette Australia, we’re looking for modern, contemporary voices telling stories that are engaging and subversive. We

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Furious Fiction August 2018 winner and shortlist

It’s time to announce the winning story and shortlist for August’s Furious Fiction! We received a record number of entries this month, and each story simply had to include the following three sentences: The door was locked. She laughed. It felt familiar. A reminder that all stories are judged “blind”

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Furious Fiction July 2018 winner and shortlist

It’s time to announce the winning story and shortlist for July’s Furious Fiction! We received more than 700 entries, all working off the following criteria: The first sentence had to contain a question. Each story had to contain the words JAM, JACKPOT and JUNGLE (or an applicable “s”, “ing” or

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

The short long list of YOUR 21-word stories

To celebrate the recent Shortest Day of the Year (21 June 2018), we asked you to write us a story in 21 words or fewer. It simply had to contain the words “short” and “day” in it. On the day, we received nearly one thousand stories! What follows is a

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

The Shortest Day Short Short Short Story Challenge

To celebrate the shortest day of the year today, 21 June, we’ve decided to celebrate short short short stories – and challenge you to write something short for us! Your story must be no more than 21 words long. Your story must include the words “short” and “day”. Your story

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Furious Fiction June 2018 winner

It’s time to announce the winning story and shortlist for June’s Furious Fiction! This month, we did something quite different from previous months. A picture prompt. (The image of the dinner table above.) There was just ONE criteria this month: Your story had to begin with the scene that you see

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Furious Fiction May 2018 winner

This month, Furious Fiction (our monthly $500 short-short story competition) found itself launching on May the fourth. So, we threw in some Star Wars fun – being very clear that entrants did not have to write in the sci-fi genre. (Find out more about how our free monthly Furious Fiction

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Furious Fiction April 2018 winner

For April’s Furious Fiction $500 short story competition, we turned the screws a little – by making everyone write a story that had the same title: THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. Along with that, they also needed to use three specific words at some point in their story and end

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Two competitions for emerging writers

Breaking into the world of publication can be tough for emerging writers. One excellent way to get a foot in the door is to enter competitions. The Australasian Association of Writing Programs has two great competitions now open to emerging writers. Who is an “emerging writer?”  For these competitions, according

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Furious Easter challenge winners and shortlist

Over the recent Easter long weekend, we challenged our Furious Fiction Fan Club members to a 29-word story challenge. (What’s Furious Fiction, you ask? Find out all about it here.) The challenge criteria: Their story must feature a bunny Their story must include the word CALENDAR Their story must not

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2018 Literary Taxidermy Short Story Competition

Here’s a novel idea for a writing competition— you’re given the opening and closing lines from one of three classic works and you write the rest! Hence the name the Literary Taxidermy Short Story Competition. From the Literary Taxidermy Website: The Literary Taxidermy Short Story Competition is open to all.

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Furious Fiction March 2018 winner

For this month’s second Furious Fiction short story competition, we spun our judging chairs around and waited to let the notes you were belting out wash over us – with musically themed stories, 500 words or fewer. For the winner? A recording contrac– oops, no, we mean FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS CASH.

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Competitions and Opportunities
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Furious Fiction February 2018 winner

This month, the Australian Writers’ Centre kicked off Furious Fiction – our brand new MONTHLY short story competition, challenging anyone on the planet (aged 17 or older) to deliver us a sub-500 word story in just one weekend! And the reward? A very tasty $500 in cash. (Please don’t eat

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