Thank you to everyone who submitted their short stories to the 2019 Margaret River Short Story Competition. This year, nineteen short stories were selected out of over 240 entries.
We extend our thanks to the judges, Donna Mazza, Luke Johnson and Camha Pham, and editor, Michelle Cahill, for taking the time to be part of the judging process for the longlist and shortlist.
Editor Michelle Cahill had this to say about this year’s shortlist:
‘Reading through the longlist for this year’s Margaret River Press Short Story Competition, I was struck by the many stories inflected by contemporary concerns: climate change, the need for queer spaces and voices, cultural inclusiveness. And yet, equally, the stories that impressed me most succeed in realising complex emotions that we sometimes fail to honour in our daily lives and in our close relationships. It has been a privilege to judge this prize; my warm congratulations to the shortlisted writers and the winners.’
Congratulations to Kit Scriven, who took out first place with his short story ‘We’ll Stand in That Place’, and to Catherine Noske, whose short story ‘Thylacine’ won second place. Rachel McEleney’s short story ‘The Day the Rain Stopped Dancing’ is the winner of the Southwest Prize.
Of the nineteen stories chosen, there are six writers from Victoria, five from Western Australia, four from New South Wales, three from Queensland and one from South Australia.
2019 SHORT STORY SHORTLIST
Emily Bewin – A Twist Of Smoke
Claire Corbett – Aftertaste
Darryl R. Dymock – A Tough Little Bird
K.W. George – Three Dog Night
Justine Hyde – Emotional Support
Jenni Mazaraki – Somebody’s Baby
Rachel McEleney – The Day the Rain Stopped Dancing *Southwest Prize*
Audrey Molloy – Thirty Sacks
Catherine Noske – Thylacine *Second Prize*
Anthony Panegyres (Phillips) – The Do
Emily Paull – A Moveable Farce
Kathy Prokhovnik – Still life
K.A. Rees – Butterscotch
Mirandi Riwoe – Cinta Ku
Kit Scriven – We’ll stand in that place *First Prize*
Mark Smith – A Concreter’s Heart
Andrew Sutherland – The Children
Jem Tyley-Miller – The Monster in the Lake
Lynette Washington – Mycorrhizal Networks
About Michelle Cahill:
Michelle Cahill’s short stories, Letter to Pessoa, won the UTS Glenda Adams Award, the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for New Writing and was shortlisted in the Steele Rudd Queensland Literary Awards. She won the Hilary Mantel International Short Story Prize and was shortlisted in the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Prize. She was a Fellow at Kingston Writing School, a Visiting Scholar in Creative Writing at UNC, Charlotte and a Fellow at Hawthornden Castle. She is an award-winning poet and critic. Her essays have appeared in the Sydney Review of Books, Southerly, Westerly and The Weekend Australian.
About Donna Mazza:
Donna Mazza writes fiction and poetry and was a recipient of the Mick Dark Flagship Fellowship for Environmental writing at Varuna Writers Centre. She lectures in Arts at Edith Cowan University South West and delivered the Randolph Stow Memorial Lecture on behalf of The Westerly Centre. She is author of The Albanian (Fremantle Press), which received the T.A.G Hungerford Award.
About Luke Johnson:
Luke Johnson is a writer and lecturer from NSW. His stories have appeared in places such as Griffith Review, Overland, Island, Westerly, Going Down Swinging, Mascara Literary Review and The Lifted Brow. They have also been listed or won such prizes as the AAWP Chapter One Prize, Josephine Ulrick Prize, Elizabeth Jolley Prize and Katharine Susannah Prichard Prize.
About Camha Pham:
Camha Pham is an accredited editor with a background in educational publishing. She has worked across a broad range of materials including non-fiction, fiction, educational materials and literary journals. She was formerly a Development Editor at Oxford University Press, Melbourne, and has a Master of Publishing and Editing from Monash University. She currently sits on the Margaret River Press Editorial Board.
