Progressive culture since 1954
From a record number of entries, the judges of the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets 2020—Bonny Cassidy, Bella Li, Anne-Marie Te Whiu, and Toby Fitch—selected these four poems as the winner.
Thank you to everyone who entered the prize. We received almost five hundred submissions across all categories, and our judges Jeanine Leane, Justin Clemens and Elena Gomez were incredibly impressed by the quality of submissions. Congratulations to our fantastic shortlisted writers.
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.
Overland and the Malcolm Robertson Foundation are thrilled to announce the entries that placed in the 2020 Overland Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize! This year’s star judges, Mirandi Riwoe, Jeanine Leane and Wayne Marshall, rose to the challenging task of selecting a shortlist of eight pieces from over 500 entries, before narrowing the result down to three exceptional stories.
This year’s stellar judges, Bonny Cassidy, Bella Li, Anne-Marie Te Whiu and Toby Fitch (who is also Overland’s poetry editor), read over 900 entries before selecting a shortlist of just eight outstanding works – including poetry from emerging poets such as Sara Saleh, Harry Reid and Declan Fry. The judges then chose four unforgettable poems to place 1st, 2nd and 3rd in this year’s prize. The competition was so fierce this year that the judges chose two poems to share 3rd place!
Why subscribe? Because this year we survived a pandemic and ruthless cuts to arts funding, but we’re going to need your help to survive (and thrive) in 2021. Because we will continue to do whatever we can to make sure that all voices are heard, to resist and destroy the systems that deny them, and to drown out the drone of the status quo. Because there’s nothing more satisfying than the first time you open a new issue of Overland and you can smell, touch and hear the pages and pages of hope, fury, joy and revolution printed in neatly set, size 12 font.
Hello! My name is Dingo, but everyone calls me Mirri. I was born in country NSW last summer and my parents are Jon and Evie and they do the stuff with the words. This year I moved to Melbourne so they could work at Overland and buy me lots of biscuits and toys. They explained that they won’t always be working at our house and next year I’ll be going to daycare or visiting them at the office, but that’s alright because I’m an intern and I have a very special job – I’m the one that sniffs all of the journals.
Over the years, Overland has given me the same solace as a writer and as a reader. To pick up a print issue is to step in a different, more humane world. That’s what radicalism has always meant to me: the exercise of social imagination so that we can think of the world differently.I have been associated with the Overland for the best part of a decade, and it felt from the very beginning like I had found my people.
This is the kind of fiction that is so exciting to publish in Overland, seeing what might be familiar to us in Australian life as strange and new, with bright and strange colours. ‘Crabs’ is one of the main reasons I wanted to edit fiction for Overland – to discover a writer so exhilarating, with new things to say about Australia. Overland is, I believe, publishing some great new fiction that is just as electrifying, taking us in new directions.
Those of us in Melbourne have been pushed far beyond our limits by one of the most punishing lockdowns in the world, and so many of the rest of us have had a year of unique deprivation, uncertainty, and anxiety. But despite all of that, our first year as co-editors of this unique and necessary journal has been a rich and inspiring experience. We have had the opportunity to work with and support an incomparable cohort of brilliant, searching and provocative writers across a stunning breadth of forms and subjects.
The Nakata Brophy Short Fiction and Poetry Prize recognises the talent of young Indigenous writers across Australia. Sponsored by the University of Melbourne’s Trinity College, the prize alternates each year between fiction and poetry; this year’s prize is for the best poem…
We’d like to thank everyone who entered this year for their thoughtful and incredible work. We received an impressive and high quality range of poems, and each and every writer deserves congratulations. We’d also like to thank our judges, Evelyn Araluen and Gayle Allan (Trinity College), for their hard work and dedication to the decision-making process.
If it were a thousand-limbed Monkey Puzzle seeded against the odds by continental seabirds, or a Mesozoic Bunya Pine cast out from ancient lands it would be celebrated as a rarity, but its aetiology is unknown
Overland and the Malcolm Robertson Foundation are thrilled to announce the entries that placed in the Overland 2019 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize! This year’s star judges, Hannah Kent, Joshua Mostafa and Margo Lanagan, rose to the challenging task of selecting a shortlist of eight pieces from over 450 entries, before narrowing the shortlist down to three exceptional stories.
Thank you to everyone who entered the Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize, the quality of the work we received was very high this year! We’d also like to recognise the hard work of this year’s incredibly dedicated judges: Hannah Kent, Joshua Mostafa and Margo Lanagan. They had the challenging task of reading, considering and narrowing over 450 entries down to a shortlist of eight outstanding pieces.
In one of the most successful years in the history of the prize, we received over 750 entries from poets all around the world. We’d like to thank all the entrants for their brave, disruptive and original work, and our 2019 judges, Ellen van Neerven, Michael Farrell and Toby Fitch, for their hard work and dedication to the decision-making process.
Announcing the final results for the ten categories of the 2019 Fair Australia Prize. Hearty congratulations to all!
The Overland Victoria University Short Story Prize received an impressive selection of short stories this year that, in the words of judge Pip Adams, ‘would make an amazing snapshot of the short story in 2019’.
We’d like to thank the many entrants who worked hard on their story submissions for the prize this year. Our four judges for the 2019 competition – writers Pip Adam, Michelle Aung Thin, Steven Amsterdam and Enza Gandolfo – have now decided on a shortlist of fourteen outstanding stories.
The Nakata Brophy Short Fiction and Poetry Prize recognises the talent of young Indigenous writers across Australia. Sponsored by the University of Melbourne’s Trinity College, the prize alternates each year between fiction and poetry; this year’s prize is for the best short story (up to 3000 words) by an Indigenous writer under 30.
The Nakata Brophy Short Fiction and Poetry Prize recognises the talent of young Indigenous writers across Australia. Sponsored by the University of Melbourne’s Trinity College, the prize alternates each year between fiction and poetry; this year’s prize is for the best short story (up to 3000 words) by an Indigenous writer under 30.
Overland, judges Alison Whittaker, Nguyễn Tiên Hoàng and Toby Fitch, and the Malcolm Robertson Foundation are thrilled to announce the results of the 2018 Judith Wright Poetry Prize.
Overland and the Malcolm Robertson Foundation are very pleased to announce the entries that placed in the 2018 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize.
This year, the first place prize is $4000 and publication in Overland 235. Two runner-up stories will be awarded $500 each, and will be published online alongside our winter edition.
We’d like to thank the 650 entrants for their impressive work this year. Now, the 2018 judges – Alison Whittaker, Nguyễn Tiên Hoàng and Toby Fitch – have arrived at a shortlist of nine outstanding poems.
From a pool of 863 entries, a longlist of 30 impressive stories, and a very strong shortlist of thirteen, this year’s judges – Michelle Cahill, Sarah Schmidt, Tom Clark and Jennifer Mills – have decided on the 2018 winner and two runners-up in the $8000 Overland Victoria University Short Story Prize for New and Emerging Writers.
An initiative of the Queensland Poetry Festival, the Emerging Older Poets’ Mentorship is designed to address a lack of opportunities in the 55+ age bracket.
While we’d like to thank all 863 entrants who worked hard to submit this year, the four judges for the 2018 competition – writer Sarah Schmidt, writer and editor Michelle Cahill, writer and VU academic Tom Clark, and writer and Overland fiction editor Jennifer Mills – have now decided on a shortlist of thirteen outstanding stories.
What does unionism mean to people today? What should be its objectives? How can we come together to make real change, now and into the future?
This prize encourages artists and writers of fiction, poetry and essays to be part of setting a new agenda for our future – to imagine a just, common future, and how we might get there together.
The Nakata Brophy Short Fiction and Poetry Prize recognises the talent of young Indigenous writers across Australia. Sponsored by the University of Melbourne’s Trinity College, the prize alternates each year between fiction and poetry; this year’s prize is for the best poem (up to 88 lines) by an Indigenous writer under 30.
The Nakata Brophy Short Fiction and Poetry Prize recognises the talent of young Indigenous writers across Australia. Sponsored by the University of Melbourne’s Trinity College, the prize alternates each year between fiction and poetry; this year’s prize is for the best poem (up to 88 lines) by an Indigenous writer under 30.
The final results of the 2017 Overland Neilma Sidney Short Prize.
The final results of the 2017 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize, as well as notes on the shortlist and a list of Highly Commended poems from this year’s competition.
The 2017 judges – Nic Low, Ryan O’Neill and Jennifer Mills – have finished their blind judging and deliberation, and decided on a shortlist of thirteen brilliant stories that approach the theme in original ways.
The 2017 judges, poet Ali Cobby Eckermann and Overland poetry editor Toby Fitch, have finished blind judging the competition and, after deliberation, have selected a shortlist of nine poems.
Overland, the National Union of Workers, the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, and the National Tertiary Education Union (VIC) are very pleased to announce the winning entries of this year’s Fair Australia Prize.
We are pleased to announce the shortlisted writers and artists for the 2017 Fair Australia Prize.
Overland, Victoria University and this year’s four judges – Frank Moorhouse, Enza Gandalfo, Ian See and Rachael McGuirk – are very pleased to announce the winners of the Victoria University Short Story Prize for New and Emerging Writers.
Overland and Victoria University are pleased to announce that the four judges of this year’s Victoria University Short Story Prize for New and Emerging Writers – author Frank Moorhouse, UQP editor Ian See, writer and academic Enza Gandalfo and Overland’s Rachael McGuirk – have reduced this year’s 800 entries to a shortlist of ten stories.
Overland, Trinity College and judges Tara June Winch, Jennifer Mills and Katherine Firth are very pleased to announce the final results of this year’s Nakata Brophy Prize.
Now in its fourth year, the Nakata Brophy Short Fiction and Poetry Prize recognises the talent of young Indigenous writers across Australia. Sponsored by the University of Melbourne’s Trinity College, the prize alternates each year between fiction and poetry; this year’s prize is for the best short story (up to 3000 words) by an Indigenous writer under 30.
Overland and judges Stephanie Bishop, Aviva Tuffield and Tony Wheeler are pleased to announce the winning entries in this year’s Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize.
The three judges for this year’s competition – Stephanie Bishop, Aviva Tuffield and Tony Wheeler – have finished their blind judging and deliberation, and decided on a shortlist of nine outstanding stories with varying approaches to the theme.
For the first time in its history, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize has resulted in a tie; as such, the prize money for this year’s first and second place will be combined, and split evenly between the two poems that have placed equal first.
The 2016 judges, Overland poetry editor Toby Fitch and poet Jill Jones, have finished blind judging the competition and, after deliberation, have selected a shortlist of nine poems.
Overland and the National Union of Workers are very pleased to announce the winning entries of this year’s Fair Australia Prize.
We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2016 Overland Story Wine Prize.
Overland and the National Union of Workers are pleased to announce and congratulate the following writers and artists who have been shortlisted for the 2016 Fair Australia Prize.
We received more than 500 entries in the third year of the Overland Story Wine Prize, the calibre of which greatly impressed our three judges – award-winning writer and screenwriter Michelle Law, novelist and winner of the 2015 Stella Prize Emily Bitto, and winner of the 2015 Overland Story Wine Prize, Melissa Manning.
Overland, Victoria University and this year’s three judges – Jennifer Mills, Alison Whan and Jacinda Woodhead – are very pleased to announce the winners of the Victoria University Short Story Prize for New and Emerging Writers.
Overland and Victoria University are pleased to announce that the three judges of this year’s Victoria University Short Story Prize for New and Emerging Writers – Overland fiction editor Jennifer Mills, Overland editor Jacinda Woodhead and Victoria University’s Alison Whan – have reduced this year’s 500 entries to a shortlist of fourteen stories.
This $20,000 prize encourages artists and writers of fiction, poetry and essays to be part of setting a new agenda for Australia. Winning entries will be published in a special Fair Australia supplement in Overland 225, to be launched in Melbourne in early December. Entry is free.
Announcing the winners of this year’s Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers.
The three judges for the 2015 competition – Charmaine Papertalk-Green, Overland’s Toby Fitch and Trinity College’s Katherine Firth – have now decided on a shortlist of six outstanding poems from up-and-coming Indigenous writers.
But really, isn’t nurturing the penniless avant-garde something we should all embrace? If we sincerely believe in the great life of the imagination, the radiant promise of its daily emergence in literature, music, art, and film, and in deep reflection and complex thought – all those inalienable horizons to being truly human – then we should also step-up and protect the imagination from the many equally great forces that humanity casts against it daily.
Overland magazine and the Malcolm Robertson Foundation are very pleased to announce the winners of the inaugural Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize.
The three judges for the first year of the competition – Alice Pung, Ellen van Neerven and Stephanie Convery – have now finished their blind judging and deliberation, and decided on a shortlist of eight outstanding stories with varying approaches to the theme, ‘travel’.
Overland magazine and the Malcolm Robertson Foundation are very pleased to announce the winners of the 2015 Judith Wright Poetry Prize.
In its ninth year, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize continues to attract hundreds of outstanding new poetic works from across Australia and New Zealand. Now, Overland’s retiring poetry editor Peter Minter and Overland’s new poetry editor Toby Fitch have finished blind judging the competition and, after deliberation, have selected a shortlist of eight poems.
Overland, Victoria University and the three judges – Nam Le, Natalie Kon-yu and Jacinda Woodhead – are very please to announce the winners of the Victoria University Short Story Prize for New and Emerging Writers.
Overland and Victoria University are pleased to announce that the three judges of the Victoria University Short Story Prize for New and Emerging Writers – writer Nam Le, writer and Victoria University academic Natalie Kon-yu and Overland editor Jacinda Woodhead – have finally decided on a shortlist of twelve stories.
The stories that stood out in this year’s competition, especially those on the shortlist, note judges Alicia Sometimes, Clare Strahan and Leah Swann, honed in on a moment or mood ‘with precision and attention to the finest, evocative detail’.
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.
Arts Queensland’s XYZ Prize for Innovation in Spoken Word is Australia’s first arts award that recognises the growing field of spoken word.
Overland and the National Union of Workers are very pleased to announce the winners of the inaugural Fair Australia Prize, all of whom will be published in Overland 220, a special extended edition to be launched in Melbourne in late August.
The Overland Victoria University Short Story Prize for New and Emerging Writers is now open. This year, the competition will be judged by writer Nam Le, writer and academic Natalie Kon-yu and Overland‘s Jacinda Woodhead.
What does a fair Australia look like, and how do we get there? The Fair Australia Prize asked writers and artists to engage with these questions and imagine a new political agenda for Australia through fiction, essays, poetry and illustrations. Overland…
Since 2007, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize has been Australia’s richest competition for new and emerging poets. This year again the competition attracted hundreds of high-calibre entries.
In 2015 the prize will be awarded to the best short story (limit of 3000 words) by an Indigenous writer who is 30 years or younger at the closing date of the competition.
The judges – Overland editor Jeff Sparrow, fiction editor Jennifer Mills, deputy editor Jacinda Woodhead, and Victoria University academic and writer Jenny Lee – have finally decided on a shortlist of thirteen stories.
It’s our great pleasure to announce the winners of the inaugural Overland Story Wine Prize.
We received around 400 entries for our inaugural Story Wine Prize. The three judges – novelist and Overland contributing editor Clare Strahan, wine writer and critic Campbell Mattinson, and short story writer and novelist Paddy O’Reilly – said they found the stories to be clever and diverse, and of a high standard overall.
The competition aims to discover the finest in original short fiction by new writers across Australia and New Zealand. With a $6000 first prize and two runner-up prizes of $1000, the award is the most lucrative of its kind in both countries. All three winning stories will also be published in Overland magazine.
Welcome to the Overland Story Wine Prize. The competition aims to discover the finest in original short fiction under a thousand words. The winning story will receive a $3000 first prize and will be published on the label of a Story Wines shiraz, as well as in Overland. Two runners-up will each receive $500.