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Below is the list of 17 stories as chosen by our fantastic team of editors. Every story entered was read by 2-3 people for fairness (a total of 397,000 words by 3 is a lot of hours of reading!) These stories will now go to our judge, Laurie Steed, in Perth. 

All of these 17 stories will be published in issue 10 of [untitled], with 3 of them winning prize money ($1000, $500 & $250). Winners will NOT be announced until the launch on 30 April 2022.

I’d like to thank everyone for entering and encourage you to keep working at your stories. The kinds of things that keep a story from being chosen are: needing too much editing, an unsatisfying ending or cliché characters. BUT just because a story is not on this list, it may have come close. There were many, many stories that only just fell short of satisfying our readers.

Congratulations to these writers:

[untitled], the best Australian little pocketbook of stories, began in 2009 with the desire to publish good short stories in any genre. This humble anthology was an early publisher of some great Australian writers such as, A S Patric, Ryan O’Neill, George Ivanoff, Les Zig, Tess Evans, Laurie Steed, Laura Elvery, Koraly Dimitriadis and KW George (just to name a few). 

What began as a desire to publish new and emerging writers in Australia has been well and truely realised over 9 issues, as the above mentioned names can attest. The tradition thankfully continues as we plan the publication of issue 10.

To celebrate our 10th issue, we are doing things differently. All stories to be published in the next issue will come from long-listed entries to the competition and the prize money is doubled.

We are excited to have Laurie Steed as the judge for this competition. Laurie is intent on finding a deeper connection to life through the written word and helping as many people as he can to do the same. The author of You Belong Here (2018) and editor of Shibboleth and other stories (2016), his work has been featured on BBC Radio 4 and in collections including Best Australian Stories, Award Winning Australian Writing, The Review of Australian Fiction, The Age, Meanjin, Westerly, Island, and The Sleepers Almanac.

Laurie has also been a champion of our little anthology from the beginning and understands our search for great short stories.

Winners will win prize money and also be published in issue 10 of [untitled], to be launched on 30 April 2022.

PRIZES

Major Dates

20 July–20 September: Entries received

1 November: Longlist announced

1 November–15 December: Judging

15 January–15 April: Editing/production

30 April: Book launch and winning announcements

[untitled] is proudly brought to you by Pinion Press, an imprint of Busybird Publishing