Anyone who subscribes, resubscribes or donates over the next week goes into the draw to win some spectacular prizes. This year’s prizes include a holiday to Ubud, original artworks, locally roasted coffee, wine, workshops – and piles of books and subscriptions.
Remember: current subscribers can also take this opportunity to resubscribe and go into the draw – we’ll simply add another year your existing subscription. Subscribe today.
We want a better world, one in which all writers are supported
It’s hard to write. You have to find time around work and life, or family or poverty or other commitments.
It’s hard to be a writer, and even harder to be an emerging writer. It can be lonely, atomising and there’s not a great deal of support. One of the real difficulties new writers face is where they can publish their work.
But at Overland, we don’t just love you when you’re famous. As our founding editor Stephen Murray-Smith wrote in our very first editorial in 1954:
[Overland] will publish poetry and short stories, articles and criticism by new and by established writers. It will aim high … [but] will make a special point of developing writing talent in people of diverse backgrounds. We ask of our readers, however inexpert, that they write for us.
Overland believes in the democratisation of politics and culture – that everyone has a right to participate, to put forward arguments, to create.
We work with and publish emerging writers on a daily basis. In fact, more than 60 per cent of the writers we publish in our online magazine are new writers; sometimes, we’re proud to say, it’s their very first published piece. We also publish emerging forms – unAustralian fiction (guest edited by Ben Walter), digital poetry (guest edited by Benjamin Laird), spoken word (guest edited by Maxine Beneba Clarke – while not exactly a new form, it was new for Overland) and now a poetry podcast (edited by Overland poetry editor Toby Fitch)! This is in addition to our special emerging fiction issues, guest edited by emerging editors and featuring the work of emerging writers. We are thrilled to publish hundreds of different writers in our various publications each year.
Without this support and interest in new writers and underrepresented perspectives, Overland wouldn’t be producing great literature. We don’t do tokenism: we invite new writers to publish alongside established writers, we work with them on their writing and editing, and we pay all our writers. As of 2017, we’ll be paying more.
Overland also run a series of literary competitions, three of which are specifically for emerging writers:
Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets (open now)
Nakata Brophy Short Fiction and Poetry Prize for Young Indigenous Writers (opens 1 December)
Overland Victoria University Short Story Prize for New and Emerging Writers (opens again in 2017)
These competitions provide writers with time and space to work on their craft.
As part of this year’s Emerging Writers’ Boot Camp Prize (one of our 2016 Subscriberthon Major Prizes), we are offering one subscriber a six-person writing workshop with our fiction editor Jennifer Mills, an award-winning novelist, poet and short story writer, whose essay ‘Detroit, I do mind’ appears in this year’s Best Australian Essays.
The workshop is for the winner and five members of their writing group or community, because all writers need communities.
(Note: Overland has only run one writing workshop in the past – the one mentioned in Alec Patric’s Miles Franklin acceptance speech, which was also attended by Maxine Beneba Clarke. We think it was a terrific success!)
By taking out, renewing or giving an Overland subscription today, you could win:
- this Daily Prize
- any of the four superb Major Prizes, including the Emerging Writers’ Boot Camp!
- and/or one of our Regional Prizes, including a most excellent prize for our New Zealand subscribers
- a good feeling about yourself – and the future of progressive literary culture
Day Six: A Prize of Prizewinners
2 x bottles of Story Wines 2014 Shiraz (featuring the inaugural Story Wine Prize winner Leah Swann with ‘That inward eye’)
1 x block of handcrafted Wawa chocolate
And all of these acclaimed titles:
- The Hate Race by Maxine Beneba Clarke
- Black Rock White City by AS Patrić
- Small Acts of Disappearance by Fiona Wright
- A Very Normal Man by Vincenzo Cerami
- The Easy Way Out by Steven Amsterdam
- Black Dust Dancing by Tracy Crisp
- Treading Air by Ariella Van Luyn
- The Unknown Judith Wright by Georgina Arnott
- The Permanent Resident by Roanna Gonsalves
- Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic
- Extinctions by Josephine Wilson
- Captives by Angela Meyer
- Skylarking by Kate Mildenhall
- The Hidden Life of Trees By Peter Wohlleben
- Australian Love Stories edited by Cate Kennedy
1 x Black Inc. tote bag
See the list of Subscriberthon Prizes for 2016, including these Major Prizes:
Major Prize 1: Book to Bali
5 x nights at the Honeymoon Guesthouse in Ubud, plus return flights to Bali (from anywhere in Australia)
2 x bottles of Story Wines 2014 Shiraz (featuring the inaugural Story Wine Prize winner Leah Swann with ‘That inward eye’)
1 x 250g of Padre espresso coffee beans, freshly roasted in Brunswick
1 x embossed Padre coffee tin
1 x Scribe pack, including a Scribe tote bag and these 10 books:
The Love of a Bad Man by Laura Elizabeth Wollett
Cairo by Chris Womersley
Lion Attack by Oliver Mol
We Are All Stardust by Stefan Klein
My Brilliant Career: Malcolm Turnbull: a political life, in cartoons edited by Russ Radcliffe
Money Shot by Jeff Sparrow
Fear and Politics by Carmen Lawrence
Kiffy Rubbo: curating the 1970s edited by Janine Burke, Helen Hughes
The Brain’s Way of Healing by Norman Doidge
Rise of the Machines by Thomas Rid
1 x copy of It’s a Long Way from Acca-Dacca to Zappa, 1969–1979: The Photography of Philip Morris
Major Prize 2: Emerging Writers’ Boot Camp
1 x Overland fiction writing workshop for you and five members of your writing group/community; to be facilitated by Jennifer Mills in Melbourne in early 2017
1 x Pilot 2017: A Diary for Writers
1 x Cinema Nova silver pass (three months of films for you and a friend!)
1 x Lifted Brow collection, including:
TLB tote bag
copy of The Island Will Sink
6 x back issues (including latest issue)
1 x $30 Voucher to North Melbourne Books
1 x 250g of Padre espresso coffee beans, freshly roasted in Brunswick
1 x embossed Padre coffee tin
1 x Puzzle Peace art puzzle
As well as these superb titles:
The Hate Race by Maxine Beneba Clarke
Black Rock White City by AS Patrić
Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic
Captives by Angela Meyer
Skylarking by Kate Mildenhall
The Hidden Life of Trees By Peter Wohlleben
Ghost Girls by Cath Ferla
Australian Love Stories edited by Cate Kennedy
Double Dissolution by Lee Zacariah
Westography: Images of a Vanishing Suburbia by Warren Kirk
Major Prize 3: Cultural Defibrillator Pack
1 x Kobo Glo HD ereader
1 x Wide Open Road pack, including:
Aerobie AeroPress Espresso Maker – ‘The best coffee maker I’ve ever owned’
1 x 250g coffee beans (or ground), freshly roasted in Brunswick
‘It’s in our blood’ mug
Wide Open Road tote bag
2 x hessian sacks
1 x one-year Griffith Review subscription
1 x one-year Meanjin subscription
3 x back issues of Southerly
1 x Bee Sustainable pack containing:
1 x beekeeping workshop
The Australian Beekeeping Manual by Robert Owen
1 x Scribe pack, including a Scribe tote bag and these 10 books:
The Near and the Far: new stories from the Asia-Pacific region edited by David Carlin and Francesca Rendle-Short
The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore
Fever of Animals by Miles Allinson
So Sad Today by Melissa Broder
The Middlepause by Marina Benjamin
What is a refugee? by William Maley
The Ice Age by Luke Williams
Best Australian Political Cartoons 2015
Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea
There’s not one by Jennifer Higgie
1 x copy of It’s a Long Way from Acca-Dacca to Zappa, 1969–1979: The Photography of Philip Morris
1 x Komorebi opalite, pearl, moonstone and quartz necklace
1 x salted caramel sauce
Major Prize 4: Pretty as a Picture
1 x Savina Hopkins framed original collage artwork, Woman with Book
1 x $50 Readings voucher (can be used online)
1 x 250g of Padre espresso coffee beans, freshly roasted in Brunswick
1 x embossed Padre coffee tin
2 x bottles of Story Wines 2014 Shiraz (featuring the inaugural Story Wine Prize winner Leah Swann with ‘That inward eye’)
1 x Fremantle Press TAG Hungerfield Prize pack, including:
Troppo by Madeline Dickie
The Weaver Fish by Robert Edeson
What is left over, after by Natasha Lester
Red Dirt Talking by Jacqueline Wright
The Whip Hand by Michaela Nicolescu / Nadine Browne
The Last Sky by Alice Nelson
Stories from Suburban Road by Tom Hungerford
1 x Komorebi Picasso Jasper necklace
1 x copy of Westography: Images of a Vanishing Suburbia by Warren Kirk
1 x copy of The Unknown Judith Wright by Georgina Arnott
1 x copy of It’s a Long Way from Acca-Dacca to Zappa, 1969–1979: The Photography of Philip Morris
1 x salted caramel sauce
And the following art books:
Behind the Doors: An art history from Yuendumu by Philip Jones
Cornucopia by Adrian Feint
Elvis Has Entered the Building by Ian W Adbulla
