The Tasmanian Writers' Prize 2025
The prize is for short stories up to 3,000 words having an island, or island-resonant, theme.
The winning entry receives a cash prize of $500 and all finalists' stories will appear in the Forty South Short Story Anthology 2025.
Thank you to everyone who submitted stories to this year's competition. We received 117 entries from Tasmania, Australia, and beyond. The quality of stories was exceptionally high, and as always our judges were delighted by the range of creative responses to our "Island" theme.
Winner and Finalists
The winner of the Tasmanian Writers' Prize 2025 is Gabrielle Samson for her story, A Boy in a Box.
You can read the winning story online HERE.
Our finalists are:
Elizabeth Scott (TAS), Allan Gerrity: Boom and Bust -- HIGHLY COMMENDED
Tina Cartwright (VIC), Tiny Blue Flame
Pauline Cleary (VIC), Riding the Wave
Tess Crawley (TAS), The Piper
Deborah Jowitt (NZ), Silver Bay
Rowan MacDonald (TAS), Sacrifice
Phoebe Robertson (NZ), The Preservation of the Pacific
Sandra Rutter (NSW), Unco
Judges’ Comments:
Liz Evans:
A good short story has a lot of work to do, in terms of craft, form, content and treatment. Ideally, a self-contained, self-sufficient unit within the broader, interdependent eco-system of storytelling, it should satisfy the reader, while provoking curiosity with a fresh perspective, or an unfamiliar voice.
Boy In A Box stood out for me because this is it what it manages to do. The island in this story is Timorese, and the islanders are local, ordinary people, battling the elements they also depend on. Emotionally moving and beautifully descriptive, the author extends our gaze beyond our own Australian islands with a deeply human tale of courage and resourcefulness that touches on issues beyond the limits of its scope.
Cameron Hindrum:
Reading over fifty short stories and whittling them down to a shortlist is not for the faint-hearted. Difficult decisions are required -- sleep is likely to become tenuous. However, I had as my central guiding principle some advice I received from Martin Flanagan a good few years ago now -- 'always find the compass of a story'. This is as applicable to the writing process -- whereby one can determine what the story 'is' and therefore also determine what it 'is not' -- as it is to reading stories for the purposes of determining which of them represents the craft most strongly, resonates most clearly or simply stays with me after I've finished reading.
Most importantly, I am delighted to report that the short story form is alive and well. There was a wide range of moments, experiences, memories, histories, arguments and redemptions presented in the large number of submitted stories; there were moments of humour, parody, pathos and genuine tragedy. I think the quality of entries can be asserted in the fact that choosing the overall winner was nearly impossible -- the judges had some difficulty separating what would become the winner from the story that has, deservedly, received a Highly Commended. Each of the other stories in this collection celebrates both the craft of the short story and the vicissitudes of the human condition in separate and unique ways, and I commend them all to you.
Our Anthology will be launched later this year, details to be announced.
Congratulations again to all our finalists!
Judges
Liz Evans
Originally from the UK, Liz Evans is a journalist, author, former psychotherapist, and sessional academic currently based in lutruwita/Tasmania. She holds an MA in Jungian and post-Jungian Studies from the University of Essex and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Tasmania where she has taught English and Writing units as an Associate Lecturer, and is now an Adjunct Researcher. In 1994 and 1997, she published two books on women and rock culture for Pandora/HarperCollins. Liz is now a freelance literary critic for The Conversation, and a regular contributor to Bookish on ABC Hobart. Her debut novel, Catherine Wheel (Ultimo Press, 2024) is a literary psychological thriller that has been described as ‘feminist noir’. She is currently working on her second novel for Ultimo.
Cameron Hindrum
Dr Cameron Hindrum has published a novel, three collections of poetry and had two plays professionally produced in Tasmania. In 2021 he was awarded a Doctorate of Creative Arts (Writing) from the University of Wollongong, with the novel written as part of that degree -- 'The Sand' -- winning the University of Tasmania Prize for Best Unpublished Manuscript at the 2022 Tasmanian Premier's Literary Awards. He is the author of The Blue Cathedral (Forty South, 2023). For 17 years he coordinated the annual Tasmanian Poetry Festival, of which he is now the Patron.
Rayne Allinson
Rayne Allinson has a PhD in History from the University of Oxford. She is the author of A Monarchy of Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy in the Age of Elizabeth I (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012). She is Assistant Publisher at Forty South Publishing and a Bookseller at Fullers Bookshop.
