2024 brings the exciting return of the OLGA MASTERS SHORT STORY AWARD.
Short stories (2000 to 4000 words) on the theme of life in rural Australia.

With the continued support of the Masters family, the Award is administered by South East Arts, in partnership with Island Magazine. The Award welcomes entries from writers of all ages resident in Australia.

Entries open 1 July and will close on 31 August 2024. The Judges for 2024 will be announced soon.

Winners will be announced as part of the HeadLand Writers Festival taking place in Tathra from 18-20 October 2024.


2023 Olga Masters Short Story Award Announcement

At the recent Headland Writers Festival, Emma Rosetta was announced as the winner of Olga Masters Short Story Award for her story A Major Theft. Emma's winning entry will be published in Island Magazine in November, which is available for purchase through their website and will appear on here early next year.

Linda Atkins was the runner-up for her story The Doula which is available to read now on the Olga Masters website. Journalist Chirs Masters attended the announcement as a representative of the Masters family who provide the prize money for the Award, run in honour of their mother Olga Masters. Here’s to all our stories -- the living and the written -- and to many more years of nurturing Australian writers in Olga Masters’ memory!


2023 brings the exciting return of the OLGA MASTERS SHORT STORY AWARD.
Short stories (2000 to 4000 words) on the theme of life in rural Australia.

With the continued support of the Masters family, the Award is administered by South East Arts, in partnership with South Coast Writers Centre, and Island Magazine. The Award welcomes entries from writers of all ages resident in Australia.

Entries open 1 July and will close on 31 August 2023. The Judges for 2023 are Ben Walter and Kate Liston-Mills. Judging is completely anonymous.

Winners will be announced as part of the HeadLand Writers Festival taking place in Tathra from 27-29 October 2023.


 
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Many people have said to me, “What a pity you had such a big family to raise. Think of the novels and the short stories and the poems you never had time to write because of that.” And I looked at my children and I said, “These are my poems, these are my stories.”
OLGA MASTERS


Introducing the main prize Judges


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Ben Walter

Ben Walter is Tasmanian writer of fiction, essays, poetry and experimental nonfiction, whose writing has recently appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Griffith Review and The Saturday Paper. A former fiction editor at Island, his debut short story collection, What Fear Was, was published to acclaim early last year.

Kate Liston-Mills

Kate Liston-Mills is an Australian author, tutor and mother. Inspired by her home town, Pambula, on Yuin land on the far south coast of New South Wales, Kate writes about the people living there and their experiences of tragedy and triumph in everyday life.



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