EWF announces inaugural Speculate Prize for Emerging Writers

The Emerging Writers’ Festival (EWF) has announced the inaugural Speculate Prize for Emerging Writers, in partnership with RMIT University.

Open to Australian emerging writers studying at TAFE or university who have not had full-length work published by a commercial publishing house, this developmental prize is for a short literary prose work under 3000 words that ’speaks to the otherness, complexity and expansiveness of “speculation” through literature in … content, genre or form’.

The winner will receive $1500 in prize money, inclusive of a $250 stipend towards a week-long writing residency at the RMIT McCraith House on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, as well as a full pass to the 2025 National Writers’ Conference (NWC) run by EWF and a festival pass for all 2025 EWF performance events. The winning piece will be published digitally by EWF.

In addition to the winner, the writer of one highly commended entry will receive $250 prize money, a full pass to the 2025 NWC and a festival pass for all 2025 EWF performance events.

EWF is seeking entries that are ‘curious, bold, non-realist (in elements or in their entirety)’. EWF said: ‘We are excited by entries that embrace new literary modes and extend the possibilities of short-form writing. We want the piece that only you could have written.’

Category: Local news