Competitions and programs (107)
2025 Peter Porter Poetry Prize
Click here to enter the 2025 Peter Porter Poetry Prize
First prize: AU$6,000
Four other shortlisted poets: AU$1,000
Closes: midnight AEST, 7 October 2024
Judges: Sarah Holland-Batt, Paul Kane, Peter Rose
Australian Book Review welcomes entries for the twenty-first Peter Porter Poetry Prize, which is open to all international poets from 1 July 2024 until midnight AEST, 7 October 2024. This year the Porter Prize is worth a total of AU$10,000 – with a first prize of $6,000.
Entries must be an original single-authored poem of not more than 60 lines written in English. Poems must not have been previously published. The five shortlisted poems will be published in the January–February 2025 issue and the winner will be announced at a ceremony later that month.
The Peter Porter Poetry Prize is one of Australia’s most lucrative and respected poetry awards. It honours the life and work of the great Australian poet Peter Porter (1929–2010), an honoured contributor to ABR for many years. All poets writing in English are eligible to enter.
Click here for more information about past winners and to read their poems.
Before entering the Porter Prize, all poets must read the Terms and Conditions. Please read our Frequently Asked Questions before contacting us with queries about the Porter Prize.
Entry fees
Online entry (current ABR subscriber) - $20
Online entry (standard/non subscriber) - $30*
- Non-subscribers will receive digital access to ABR free of charge for four months.
Special online entry + subscription bundles
Subsequent entries may be submitted at the subscriber rate
Online entry + digital ABR subscription - $100
Online entry + Print and digital subscription (Australia) - $120
Online entry + Print and digital subscription (NZ and Asia) - $200
Online entry + Print and digital subscription (Rest of World) - $220
The Peter Porter Poetry is funded by the ABR Patrons, including support in memory of Kate Boyce.
2025 Porter Prize Judges
Sarah Holland-Batt is an award-winning poet, editor and critic. Her books have received a number of Australia’s leading literary awards, including the Stella Prize for her most recent book, The Jaguar, and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry for her second volume, The Hazards. She is also the author of a book of essays on contemporary Australian poetry, Fishing for Lightning, collecting her poetry columns written for The Australian. She is presently Professor of Creative Writing at QUT.
Paul Kane is Professor Emeritus at Vassar College. He has published eight collections of poems and a dozen other books. His awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Bogliasco Foundation. He holds an honorary doctorate from La Trobe University and was awarded the Order of Australia in 2022. He divides his time between upstate New York and rural Victoria.
Peter Rose has been Editor and CEO of Australian Book Review since 2001. His first poetry collection was The House of Vitriol (1990). Crimson Crop (2012) won a Queensland Award (Judith Wright Calanthe Award) and was shortlisted in the Prime Minister’s Literary Award. In November 2024, Pitt Street Poetry will publish his seventh collection, Attention Please!
2024 Jolley Prize Judges
Patrick Flanery is the author of four novels, including Absolution (2012), which was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary award, and a memoir, The Ginger Child. He is Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide.
Melinda Harvey is Lecturer in English at Monash University. She has been a book critic for nearly twenty years, with reviews and commentary appearing in major Australian newspapers and magazines including Australian Book Review, The Australian, The Age, and the Sydney Review of Books. She was a finalist in the 2020 Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism.
Susan Midalia is the author of three short story collections and two novels. Her new book, a collection of micro fiction called Miniatures, is published by Night Parrot Press. Susan also works as a freelance editor and a mentor to emerging writers, and has judged many writing competitions, including the ALS Gold Medal, the West Australian Premiers Book Award and the T.A.G Hungerford Award.
2024 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize
2024 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize
The 2024 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize is now closed. The Jolley Prize is worth a total of $12,500 and is for an original work of short fiction of between 2,000 and 5,000 words, written in English. This is the fifteenth time the Jolley Prize has run and it is one of the world’s leading prizes for short fiction.
Status: Closed
Prize Money: $12,500 (first prize: $6,000, second prize: $4,000, third prize: $2,500)
Dates: Opened 16 January and closed 22 April
Judges: Patrick Flanery (SA), Melinda Harvey (Vic) and Susan Midalia (WA)
More information
Please read our Frequently Asked Questions and Terms and Conditions.
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Previous winners
Subscribers to ABR can read previous prize-winning stories to the Jolley Prize. To read these stories, click here.
If you aren’t a subscriber, digital subscriptions begin at only $10 per month. Click here to become an ABR subscriber.
Judges
This year’s Jolley Prize is judged by Patrick Flanery, Melinda Harvey and Susan Midalia.
Exclusivity
Entries may be offered elsewhere during the judging of the Jolley Prize. If an entrant is longlisted and has their story offered elsewhere, the entrant will have 24 hours to decide if they wish to withdraw their story on offer elsewhere or from the Jolley Prize. Exclusivity is essential for longlisted stories to remain in contention for shortlisting.
Entry fees
Online entry (current ABR subscriber) – $20
Online entry (standard/non subscriber) – $30*
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- Non-subscribers will receive digital access to ABR free of charge for four months.
Special online entry + subscription bundles
Subsequent entries may be submitted at the subscriber rate:
Online entry + 1-year digital subscription - $100
Online entry + 1-year print & digital subscription (Australia) - $120
Online entry + 1-year print & digital subscription (NZ and Asia) - $200
Online entry + 1-year print & digital subscription (Rest of World) - $220
Please sign up to our free 'Prizes and Programs' newsletter for more information about the 2024 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize.
ABR warmly acknowledges the generous support of ABR Patron Ian Dickson AM, who makes the Jolley Prize possible in this lucrative form.
2024 Calibre Essay Prize Judges
Amy Baillieu is Deputy Editor of Australian Book Review. She completed a Masters of Publishing and Communications at the University of Melbourne in 2011 and holds a Bachelor of Arts from the same university. Prior to becoming Deputy Editor of ABR in 2012, she worked in other editorial roles at the magazine and was Philanthropy Manager from 2011–12. She regularly reviews fiction for ABR and also works as a freelance editor.
Shannon Burns is a freelance writer and member of the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice. He is a former ABR Patrons' Fellow, and has published short fiction, poetry, and academic articles. He is the author of a memoir, Childhood (Text Publishing, 2022).
Beejay Silcox is an Australian writer and critic, and was the ABR Fortieth Birthday Fellow. Her literary criticism and cultural commentary appear in national arts publications such as ABR and Times Literary Supplement. Her award-winning short stories have been published at home and abroad.
ABR is delighted to announce that Tracey Slaughter – from Aotearoa New Zealand – is the winner of the 2024 Calibre Essay Prize. Slaughter becomes the first overseas writer to claim the Calibre Prize. Judges Amy Baillieu, Shannon Burns, and Beejay Silcox chose ‘why your hair is long & your stories short’, published in the May issue of ABR, from a field of 567 entries from twenty-eight countries. Copies of the May issue can be purchased here.
This year’s runner-up is ‘Hold Your Nerve’, by Melbourne writer Natasha Sholl, and third prize goes to Canberra-based journalist Nicole Hasham for ‘Bloodstone’. These essays will be published in ABR in 2024. Tracey Slaughter receives $5,000, Natasha Sholl receives $3,000, and Nicole Hasham receives $2,000. Founded in 2007, the Calibre Prize is one of the world’s leading prizes for a new non-fiction essay.
Status: Closed for entries, winner announced
Prize money: $10,000
Dates: 23 October 2023 – 22 January 2024, 11:59 pm
Judges: Amy Baillieu, Shannon Burns, and Beejay Silcox
The judges said this of the overall field in 2024:
We were delighted to encounter works that took unusual approaches to the form ... Among them were essays exploring the ethics of AI and the repercussions of war, reflections on loss, climate change, and family, musings on lesser-known aspects of history and thoughtful approaches to political and personal subjects.
The judges said this about Slaughter’s winning essay:
In Tracey Slaughter’s “why your hair is long & your stories short”, a beauty salon becomes a refracting point for the dark complexities of womanhood ... Written in snips and snippets – the literary equivalent of a haircut – this piece is as sharp as good scissors, as evocative as it is incisive.’
The shortlist for the 2024 Calibre Prize was as follows (in alphabetical order by author surname):
Stuart Cooke (QLD) | Sounds of the Tip, or: learning to listen to the Oxley Creek Common
Else Fitzgerald (NSW) | The Things We Don’t Say Live in My Body
Chris Fleming (NSW) | Everything, Then Nothing, Just Like That
Nicole Hasham (ACT) | Bloodstone
Jeni Hunter (QLD) | Views from the Floodplain
Sang-Hwa Lee (UK) | Looking Away
Natasha Roberts (NSW) | Guide to losing your house in a bushfire
Natasha Sholl (Vic) | Hold Your Nerve
Tracey Slaughter (NZ) | why your hair is long & your stories short
David Sornig (Vic) | Os Sacrum
Carrie Tiffany (Vic) | Seven snakes
More information about the shortlisted authors can be found below.
The 2024 Calibre Prize shortlist
‘Sounds of the Tip, or: learning to listen to the Oxley Creek Common’ by Stuart Cooke
Stuart Cooke is a poet, essayist, and translator, and Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Literary Studies at Griffith University. His latest book is the poetry collection The grass is greener over your grave (Puncher & Wattmann, 2023).Stuart’s current projects include a non-fiction work about the late pop icon Michael Jackson, and a collection of essays about biology, ecology, and poetry. He lives in Brisbane, on Turrbal and Yuggera Country.
‘The Things We Don’t Say Live in My Body’ by Else Fitzgerald
Else Fitzgerald’s writing has appeared in publications including Australian Book Review, Meanjin, The Suburban Review, The Guardian, and Award Winning Australian Writing. Her collection of short speculative fiction, Everything Feels Like the End of the World, won the 2019 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers and was published by Allen & Unwin in 2022. Everything Feels Like the End of the World was shortlisted for the 2022 Aurealis Awards and the 2023 University of Southern Queensland Steele Rudd Award.
‘Everything, Then Nothing, Just Like That’ by Chris Fleming
Chris Fleming is an Australian writer and translator whose work has appeared in both the scholarly and popular media. He is the author or editor of ten books, including the acclaimed memoir On Drugs (Giramondo, 2019). As well as theoretical work and translations, his fiction, essays, poetry, and graphic work have appeared in places such as The LA Review of Books, Island, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Literary Hub, and Westerly. He is Associate Professor in Humanities and a Member of the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University.
‘Bloodstone’ by Nicole Hasham
Nicole Hasham is a writer, journalist, and editor based in Canberra (Ngunnawal and Ngambri country). Her work has appeared in Griffith Review, The Monthly, The Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald, and The Age, as well as the 2021 Best Australian Science Writing anthology. In 2010, she won a Walkley Award for journalism. Nicole was shortlisted for the UNSW Press Bragg Prize for Science Writing in 2021 and was awarded the Mick Dark Fellowship for Environmental Writing at Varuna, the national writer’s house, in 2023. Her first book, a work of narrative non-fiction, will be published by Black Inc. in 2025.
‘Views from the Floodplain’ by Jeni Hunter
Jeni Hunter was born on Whadjuk Nyoongar country (Perth) and is currently living in Meanjin (Brisbane). She is an early career writer who is completing a Bachelor of Arts with Majors in Writing and English Literature. As a dedicated reader, with an appreciation for evidence, nuance, and empathy, Jeni enjoys the immersive writing experience, and exploring the fragile balance between comfort and the unknown.
‘Looking Away’ by Sang-Hwa Lee
Sang-Hwa Lee is an educator and policy researcher specialising in geopolitics. She moved with her family from South Korea to the United Kingdom at the age of five, and is currently based in London. In her spare time, she enjoys writing essays and creative non-fiction on a wide variety of topics, including culture, history, philosophy, and politics. Raised by a Baptist pastor, she has since lost her faith but continues to indulge in her love of choral evensong.
‘Guide to losing your house in a bushfire’ by Natasha Roberts
Natasha Roberts has been writing professionally in the field of data protection and information law for many years, in both government and the private sector. In her spare time, she writes stories and is working on a novel with the support of her wonderful writing group. She lives with her partner and children in the Bega Valley/Yuin Country, in New South Wales.
‘Hold Your Nerve’ by Natasha Sholl
Natasha Sholl is a writer and lapsed lawyer based in Melbourne. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend, SBS Voices, Kill Your Darlings, and Mamamia . In 2020, she completed the KYD Mentors Program. She was shortlisted for a Varuna Fellowship in 2020 and attended a supported residency in 2022. Her first book, Found, Wanting, was published by Ultimo Press in 2022.
‘why your hair is long & your stories short’ by Tracey Slaughter
Photo by Joel Hinton
Tracey Slaughter is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her work has received numerous awards including the Manchester Poetry Prize 2023, the Fish Short Story Prize 2020, and the Bridport Prize 2014. In 2018 her poem ‘breather’ came runner-up in ABR’s Peter Porter Poetry Prize. She teaches at the University of Waikato, where she edits the journals Mayhem and Poetry Aotearoa. Her recent books are Devil’s Trumpet (2021) and Conventional Weapons (2019), from Te Herenga Waka Press, and her latest collection the girls in the red house are singing comes out in August 2024.
‘Os Sacrum’ by David Sornig
David Sornig is the author of two books, the novel Spiel (UWAP, 2009) and Blue Lake (Scribe, 2018), a psychogeographic history of the long-forgotten swamplands and shanty town of West Melbourne, which won a Judges’ Special Prize in the 2019 Victorian Community History Awards. David has twice been a finalist in the Melbourne Prize for Literature Writer’s Prize for the essays ‘Jubilee’ (2015), about the Bendigo-born Afro-Caribbean singer Elsie Williams, and ‘Thirteen Men at the Sack of Troy’ (2021), about the industrial conquest of Melbourne’s west.
‘Seven snakes’ by Carrie Tiffany
Carrie Tiffany was born in West Yorkshire and grew up in Western Australia. She spent her early twenties working as a park ranger in Central Australia and now lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne. Her novels, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living, Mateship with Birds and Exploded View, have been published internationally and are widely acclaimed. She is the editor of the Victorian Landcare Magazine and teaches Creative Writing at the Faber Academy and La Trobe University.
Past winners
Click the link for more information about past winners and to read their essays.
FAQs and Terms and Conditions
Please read our Frequently Asked Questions before contacting us with queries about the Calibre Prize.
Before entering the Calibre Essay Prize, all entrants must read the Terms and Conditions.
Please sign up to our free ‘Prizes and Programs’ newsletter for more information about the 2024 Calibre Essay Prize.
ABR thanks founding Patrons Mary-Ruth Sindrey and Peter McLennan for their continuing support for the Calibre Essay Prize.
2024 Peter Porter Poetry Prize
Australian Book Review is delighted to announce the winner of the 2024 Peter Porter Poetry Prize is Dan Hogan for their poem‘Workarounds’, which was published in the January-February 2024 issue of ABR. This was announced at an online ceremony on 23 January 2024.
First presented in 2005, the Porter Prize is one of the world’s leading prizes for a new poem in English. It is worth a total of $10,000, of which the overall winner receives $6,000.
This year our judges were Lachlan Brown, Dan Disney and Felicity Plunkett. They chose the winner and five shortlisted poems from a field of 1,066 entries. Poets from twenty-one different countries entered the Prize.
The judges said this of ‘Workarounds’:
‘“Workarounds” remains a stunning critique of the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution, in a lexicon that could (almost) be the gibberish of a pre-ChatGPT machine attempting to replicate human thought … but not quite. Amid apparent non sequiturs, the heroically outlandish expressiveness, the absurd sleights and puns, there are moments of challenge to those alert to the fact that this poem may be investing in social critique rather than mere post-LangPo fun.’
2024 Porter Prize Shortlist
The five shortlisted poems were (in alphabetical order):
‘Poem of the Dead Woman’ by Judith Nangala Crispin (NSW)
‘Immigration Triction’ by Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon (WA)
‘Workarounds’ by Dan Hogan (NSW)*
‘Cuttle’ by Meredi Ortega (Scotland/UK)
‘Blagaj, Mostar’ by Dženana Vucic (Germany)
*winning poem
The judges said this of the shortlist:
‘Arriving at this shortlist, each of us was reading for language that was concise and perspicacious, language that arrested our attention in ways that immediately rewarded rereading. In uniquely different ways, each shortlisted poem demonstrates compelling awareness of the function not only of the poetic line but, more broadly, of syntax, grammar, diction and the power relations transmitted therein.’
The shortlisted poems were published in the January-February 2024 issue of ABR, copies of which can be purchased here.
About the shortlisted poets:
Judith Nangala Crispin is a poet and visual artist of Indigenous and mixed descent, living on unceded Yuin Country on the NSW Southern Tablelands. She has published two collections of poetry, and her verse novel will be released in 2024. Judith won the 2020 Blake prize for poetry and has been shortlisted for various other prizes. She has been commissioned by The National Gallery of Australia, The National Museum of Australia, Musica Viva, and Red Room Poetry. In 2024, a poem Judith wrote about her dog will be deposited on the moon, by NASAs Polaros mission, as part of the Lunar Codex.
Natalie Damjanovi
ch-Napoleon is a writer, songwriter, and educator who was raised on a farm by her Croatian-immigrant parents. Her poetry and creative non-fiction have appeared in Meanjin, Cordite, The Found Poetry Review, Westerly, Australian Poetry Journal and Writer’s Digest (US). Natalie’s work has been widely anthologised in both the United States and Australia. She has won the Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize (2018) and the KSP Poetry Prize (2019). Her début poetry collection, First Blood, was released in 2019 (Ginninderra Press). Her second poetry book, If There Is a Butterfly That Drinks Tears, on motherhood in the wake of the Trump presidency, was released in 2023 by Life Before Man/Gazebo Books.
Dan Hogan (they/them) is a writer from San Remo, NSW (Awabakal and Darkinjung Country). They currently live and work on Dharug and Gadigal Country (Sydney). Dan’s debut book of poetry, Secret Third Thing (Cordite, 2023), won the Five Islands Poetry Prize. Dan’s work has been recognised by the Val Vallis Award, the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, and the XYZ Prize, among others. In their spare time, Dan runs small DIY publisher Subbed In. More of their work can be found at: 2dan2hogan.com.
Meredi Ortega is from Western Australia and now lives in Scotland. Her poems have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, The Poetry Review, Meanjin, The Best Australian Science Writing 2023, and Scientific American. She contributed to the deep mapping anthology Four Rivers, Deep Maps (UWAP, 2022).
Dženana Vucic is a Bosnian-Australian writer, poet and critic currently based in Berlin. Her writing has appeared in Sydney Review of Books, Overland, Meanjin, Australian Poetry Journal, Australian Multilingual Writing Project, and others. She is currently working on her first book and tweets at @dzenanabanana.
The shortlist was derived from a longlist of eleven poems.
2024 Porter Prize Longlist
The eleven longlisted poems were (in alphabetical order):
‘Deep Time’ by Paula Bohince (USA)
‘A Christmas Ode’ by Marguerite Bunce (France)
‘Poem of the Dead Woman’ by Judith Nangala Crispin (NSW)*
‘Immigration Triction’ by Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon (WA)*
‘Portals’ by John Foulcher (ACT)
‘Workarounds’ by Dan Hogan (NSW)*
‘Whipbirds’ by Greg McLaren (NSW)
‘Cuttle’ by Meredi Ortega (Scotland)*
‘Bingeing Sestina’ by Petra Reid (Scotland)
‘Blagaj, Mostar’ by Dženana Vucic (Germany)*
‘Have they culled the roadside deer’ by Meredith Wattison (NSW)
*shortlisted poets
Click here for more information about past winners and to read their poems.
To stay updated on the Porter Prize and Australian Book Review’s other prizes, please sign up for our ‘Prizes and Programs’ newsletter.
We gratefully acknowledge the long-standing support of Morag Fraser AM and Andrew Taylor AM and support in memory of Kate Boyce.
2024 Porter Prize Judges
Dan Disney was the winner of the 2023 Peter Porter Poetry prize for his poem ‘periferal, fantasmal’. His most recent collection of poems, accelerations & inertias (Vagabond Press, 2021), was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award and received the Kenneth Slessor Prize. Together with Matthew Hall, he is the editor of New Directions in Contemporary Australian Poetry (Palgrave, 2021). He teaches with the English Department at Sogang University, in Seoul.
Felicity Plunkett is a poet and critic. Her latest work, A Kinder Sea, is published by UQP. Her first collection of poetry Vanishing Point (UQP, 2009) won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize and was shortlisted for several other awards. She has a chapbook Seastrands (2011) in Vagabond Press’ Rare Objects series. Felicity was Poetry Editor for University of Queensland Press and edited Thirty Australian Poets (UQP, 2011). She has a PhD from the University of Sydney and her reviews and essays have been widely published in The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Book Review, Sydney Review of Books etc.
Lachlan Brown is a senior lecturer in English at Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga. He is the author of Limited Cities (Giramondo, 2012) and Lunar Inheritance (Giramondo, 2017). Lachlan has been shortlisted and commended for various poetry prizes including the Mary Gilmore Prize, the Newcastle Poetry Prize, the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, and the Macquarie Fields Poetry Prize. Lachlan is currently the vice-president of Booranga Writers Centre in Wagga Wagga. His poem 'Precision Signs' was shortlisted in the 2020 Peter Porter Poetry Prize.
2023 Calibre Essay Prize Winner and Shortlist
Sydney writer Tracy Ellis is the winner of the 2023 Calibre Essay Prize for her essay 'Flow States'. Her name will be very familiar to ABR readers: Tracy won the 2022 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize for her story 'Natural Wonder'. (She is the first person to win both Calibre and the Jolley Prize.)
The judges – Yves Rees (past winner of the Calibre Prize), Peter Rose (Editor of ABR), and Beejay Silcox (critic and artistic director of the Canberra Writers Festival) – chose ‘Flow States’, the winning essay, from a field of 397 entries. Tracy Ellis receives $5,000 for her winning essay and the runner-up, Bridget Vincent, receives $2,500 for her essay 'Child Adjacent' which will appear in a future issue of the magazine.
‘Flow States’ begins with a single drop of water – a household tap left running. ‘As any plumber, doctor, or government knows, a little leak is never insignificant,’ writes Tracy Ellis. ‘A dripping hose can fill a swimming pool, a burst artery can drain your life away, a wily hacker can flood the porous, stateless internet with classified information and change the course of history.’ And so, from a single dripping tap, Ellis draws out a tale of the obliterative power – real, existential, and metaphorical – of floodwater.
‘Flow States’ impressed the Calibre judges with its elegance, layered richness, and sharp-eyed observation. It is an essay that invites – rewards – rereading. Part memoir, part cultural history, and part solastalgic elegy, ‘Flow States’ behaves like its subject: it ebbs and whorls. The result is something that speaks to our perma-crisis present, but tells a much older story.
Our 2023 runner-up, ‘Child Adjacent’ considers the culturally slippery responsibilities – and possibilities – of aunthood. ‘I am not the mother,’ writes Bridget Vincent, a writer originally from Ballarat. ‘I am an aunt instead, if “instead” is even the right word. There are categories – infertile, childless by circumstance, childless by choice – and within these, more specific groups like the Birthstrikers, who are publicly delaying procreation until there is climate action. Being an aunt of the Anthropocene is none of these and all of them at once.’
As wry as it is compassionate, ‘Child Adjacent’ impressed the judges with its conceptual freshness. It is an essay that broadens our understanding of family building, and interrogates the terrors and moral exigencies of parenting in the climate crisis. Vincent’s essay does subtle, private things in reverberative ways, which is the mark of an enduring essay.
Tracy Ellis on winning the Calibre Essay Prize:
‘It’s such an honour to be awarded the Calibre Essay Prize. I feel extraordinarily lucky that my essay resonated with the judges. To win on the back of the Jolley Prize brings an immense double happiness. ABR sets a high benchmark with the way they run Calibre and the Jolley. Having worked with Editor Peter Rose and the ABR staff on the Jolley Prize last year, I can testify to their integrity, refreshing lack of cynicism, and genuine respect for writers. These awards and acknowledgements do matter – they help enormously on both a professional and practical level. I’m extremely grateful to ABR, the judges, and Patrons, and give thanks for my good fortune.’
About Tracy Ellis
Tracy Ellis lives in Sydney and works as an editor in digital and print media. She was winner of the 2022 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize and runner-up for the 2022 Writing NSW Varuna Fellowship. She has a Master’s in Creative Writing from UTS.
2023 Calibre Prize Shortlist.
The eleven shortlisted essays are (in alphabetical order):
‘The Dark Side of Paradise’ by Ben Arogundade (UK)
‘Heimat’ by Ina Skär Beeston (UK)
‘Private Leo, My Imaginary Father’ by Kevin Brophy (VIC)
‘The Genealogies of Mr Senior’ by Martin Edmond (NSW)
‘See it Now’ by Jaimee Edwards (NSW)
‘Flow States’ by Tracy Ellis (NSW) - winner
‘The Muse of Potential Motherhood’ by Madison Godfrey (WA)
‘Blade of Grass, Meadow of Knives’ by Dan Hogan (NSW)
‘The Morning Belongs to Us’ by Siobhan Kavanagh (VIC)
‘Stone Country’ by John Stockfeld (VIC)
‘Child Adjacent’ by Bridget Vincent (VIC) - runner-up
Calibre Essay Prize:
The Prize, now in its seventeenth year, is one of the world’s leading awards for an original essay. We thank ABR Patrons Peter McLennan and Mary-Ruth Sindrey for supporting the Calibre Prize.
2023 Jolley Prize Judges
Gregory Day lives on Wadawurrung tabayl in south-west Victoria, Australia. His work has won many awards, including the 2006 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, the 2011 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story prize, the 2020 Patrick White Award and the 2021 Nature Conservancy Nature Writing Award. Day's novel, A Sand Archive, was shortlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Award. He has a new novel, The Bell of the World, out in 2023.
Jennifer Mills is an author, editor and critic living in Kaurna Yerta (Adelaide). Her novel Dyschronia was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin, Aurealis, and Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature in 2019. Mills’s latest book is The Airways, a queer ghost story set in Sydney and Beijing, published in 2021 by Picador.
Maria Takolander is a Finnish-Australian writer, reviewer, interviewer, and independent scholar. She is the author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which, Trigger Warning (UQP, 2021), won a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. Maria was also the inaugural winner of the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Competition and is the author of The Double (And Other Stories) (Text, 2013), which was shortlisted for a Melbourne Prize for Literature. Her website is mariatakolander.com.