We received more than 500 entries in the second year of the Overland Story Wine Prize, the calibre of which greatly impressed our three judges – novelist and Overland contributing editor Clare Strahan, writer and winner of the inaugural Story Wine Prize Leah Swann, and poet, writer and broadcaster Alicia Sometimes.

After reading the entries blind, the judges have selected a shortlist of eight outstanding stories. The winning story will receive a $4000 first prize and be published on the label of a bottle of Story Wine, as well as in Overland’s print magazine. Two runners-up will each receive $500 and be published at Overland online, and on the labels of different Story Wines vintages. Winners will be announced next week.

Congratulations to the 2015 Story Wine Prize shortlist:

‘I am Ali’

A young man feels compelled to become the most reviled figure in his community.

Clint Caward’s work has appeared in the Australian, Southerly, Meanjin, Wet Ink, Seizure and other literary journals. His novel Love Machine was published in 2010 and won the Federation of Australian Writers’ Best Unpublished Novel of 2014.

 

‘417 – BVB – 820’

A desultory staff-cajoled Christmas dinner in January turns anecdotal look at Australian immigration policy post-2010.

Lauren Foley is native to Ireland, and newly Australian. Her first publication was the short story Squiggly Arse Crack in the 2014 Margaret River Anthology. She is also currently shortlisted for the 2015 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year Award, Ireland. laurenfoleywriter.com | @AYearinSouthOz 

 

‘Woodsmoke’

Nora, yearning to escape a bland existence, is drawn to the vivid tastes and textures of life with Ollie.

Melissa Manning is a Melbourne-based writer. Her work has been published in the Big Issue and Visible Ink, and shortlisted for the Overland VU Short Story Prize. She was awarded a Varuna Residential Writer’s Fellowship for her first novel, Written on Bark, and is currently working on her second novel. lissmanning.com

 

‘First fish’

The surfaces and depths of pōhutukawa trees, egg sandwiches, and men. 

Zoë Meager is a writer from Christchurch, New Zealand. She has a masters in creative writing from the University of Auckland. In 2013, she won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Pacific Region. Her stories have appeared most recently in Headland, Numéro Cinq, and the HISSAC Winners Anthology.

 

‘Salt skin’

When two lovers bathe, the water evokes something unexpected.

Melanie Pryor is an Adelaide-based writer and is working on a PhD in memoir and travel writing. Her personal essays, literary fiction and prose poetry have been published in Lip Magazine and various short story anthologies. Melanie teaches English Literature at Flinders University.

 

‘The cultural prophet’ 

The cultural prophet is a story of belonging and spirituality, of creation and becoming one with Mother Earth.

Kerry Reed-Gilbert is chairperson of the First Nations Australians Writers Network (FNAWN). A Wiradjuri woman from Central New South Wales, Kerry has performed and conducted writing workshops nationally. Her poetry and prose have been published in many journals and anthologies nationally and internationally, and she has been translated into many languages.

 

‘The authentic life of Laura Kenny’

Laura Kenny never knew that Billy the Kid was a real person; this is a story about the ways books can change us.

Hayley Scrivenor lives and writes in Wollongong, Australia where she will shortly begin her PhD in creative writing. You can find her work in Prowlings, Seizure Online and Phantasmagoria. Let the record show that she is a big Billy Joel fan.

 

 ‘The dinner party’

A story about marriage and reprisal over achiote-marinated chicken breasts.

Ruth Wyer lives in southwest Sydney. Her stories have won Zinewest and the Margaret River Short Story competitions, appeared on Radio National, and in the Sleepers Almanac, Canary Press, Seizure, Lip Magazine, Award-Winning Australian Writing, and anthologies by Spineless Wonders and Margaret River Press. ruthwyer.com | @RuthWyer