August 1, 2024

Centre for Stories is thrilled to announce a new competition, the Portside Review Short But Deadly First Nations Flash Prize. We are seeking flash fiction and flash memoir submissions, open to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers over the age of 12. This competition is generously sponsored by Spinifex Foundation and Centre for Stories donors.

We are looking for flash fiction or flash memoir of 500 words or less from mob with an OPEN theme. Just make sure the story hits readers emotionally – short but deadly! We are open to diverse forms and mediums of storytelling: oral recordings, prose, hybrid poetry/prose.

The top 10 flash pieces will be selected by the judges and published writers will be paid $250 AUD each. The stories and writers will be promoted on Centre for Stories and Portside Review website and social media platforms.

The winning pieces will be published in Portside Review, an international digital journal produced by Centre for Stories. Portside Review has special connection to Boorloo (Perth), Mumbai, and Singapore, and forms an archipelago from Kinjarling to Karachi to Cape Town. Our journal celebrates stories that spark connection, peace, empathy and intercultural understanding.

Applications open on 1 August 2024 and close 15 September 2024 at 11:59PM AWST. Winners will be notified, published and announced before the beginning of November 2024.

Submissions will be judged anonymously by three First Nations judges, including Gumbaynggirr researcher and Magabala Books’ CEO Lilly Brown, Kalkadoon author John Morrissey (Overland; Voiceworks; Meanjin; This All Come Back Now), and Night Parrot Press board member and Yamatji author Mabel Gibson (Ourselves: 100 Micro Memoirs; Portside Review). Pieces will be edited by Nyungar authors Casey Mulder and Luisa Mitchell.

We encourage all interested writers based in Western Australia to find out more about Centre for Stories’ First Nations WA Writer’s Program which is facilitated by Casey Mulder and Luisa Mitchell.

Read the full guidelines and submit your application at Portside Review.

---

About the Judges

Dr Lilly Brown is a proud Gumbaynggirr woman and lives in Rubibi (Broome) on the unceded lands of the Yawuru people which is also the traditional Country of her partner and children. She is CEO of the award-winning First Nations publishing house Magabala Books and has spent over a decade advocating for the self-determination of First Nations people, including supporting organisations to develop practices of cultural safety and racial literacy, and to establish mechanisms of meaningful and sustainable governance that centre the critical knowledge and diverse lived experience of First Nations people. The most profound learning experience for Lilly has been her work with First Nations young people and Elders.

Mabel Gibson is a 24-year-old Yamatji woman who grew up in Albany (Kinjarling). Her work has been published in all three of Night Parrot Press’ anthologies, Portside Review and was featured in Magabala Book’s Maar Bidi: Next Generation Black Writing. Mabel’s debut collection of micro memoir CryBaby is set to be launched February 2025. 

John Morrissey is a Melbourne writer of Kalkadoon descent. His work has appeared in Overland, Voiceworks, Meanjin and the anthology This All Come Back Now. He was the winner of the 2020 Boundless Mentorship and the runner-up for the 2018 Nakata Brophy Prize. His first collection of stories, Firelight, was published in 2023.