In 2020, Overland literary journal received funding from Create Victoria to help sustain our organisation and encourage excellence in a struggling arts community. In  honour of the late Aunty Kerry Reed-Gilbert, Overland designated a portion of these funds for a new prize rewarding excellence and generosity in Australian writing, irrespective of form and genre. 

The Kuracca Prize for Australian Literature is open to all Australian writers for fiction, poetry, essay, memoir, creative non-fiction, cartoon or graphic stories, and digital or audio storytelling. This year, our first place winner will be awarded $5,000, while two runner prizes of $1,000 will also be awarded. Our judges Jeanine Leane, Justin Clemens and Elena Gomez have also elected to award a highly commended place. 

Thank you to everyone who entered the prize in 2020. We received almost five hundred submissions across all categories, and our judges were incredibly impressed by the quality of submissions. Congratulations to our fantastic award-winning writers:

Highly Commended:

Zana Fraillon

‘A map of passings’

A Map of Passings: So that’s where the street art comes from – a co-temporal narrative of the politically unimportant and entangled forgotten. 

Zana Fraillon is the author of eleven books, including the multi-award winning novel The Bone Sparrow.  Her latest book, The Lost Soul Atlas has been shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year and the Aurealis Award. Zana is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at La Trobe University.

Runner-up:

 Yeena Kirkbright

‘The grief tourist’

‘The Grief Tourist’ is my attempt to express the collective national guilt, grief and trauma felt following the 2019/20 bushfires. It is both a love and apology letter to our beautiful and desperate Country.

Yeena is a queer Wiradjuri writer who grew up in Central West New South Wales, she now lives and works on Wangal, Darug and Gadigal lands. Her work has been published in several literary journals.

Runner-up:

Nandini Shah

‘Me, the (failed) revolutionary’

LI-sten to DJAB WurRUNG! As a protestor fears standing and chanting with her comrades, ‘Me, the (failed) revolutionary’ grapples with the fractures of gender, immigration, colonisation and class – while the police watch from the steps of parliament house.

Nandini is a writer and poet working on Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung country. She is interested in writing as political thinking, unwinding the dense political and philosophical networks entangled in daily life.

1st Prize:

 Adam Brannigan

‘Great grandmother Arrabrilya’

Lest we forget: Here we have a single-perspective historical narrative, with layered meaning – how could we ever forget?  

Great Grandmother Arrabrilya: I don’t often write in this style; an unusual example of my secret wish for whimsical pre-invasion idylls.

Adam Brannigan is a registered nurse, and unpublished author, currently living on the Sunshine Coast. He is undertaking a degree in Creative Writing and Publishing, part-time, and favours post-modern flash fiction and short story forms. Dystopia, surrealism and themes of cultural displacement inform his fables. 

Congratulations to our wonderful award-winning authors! Remember to subscribe to read their work in upcoming editions.