myLibrary: Secondary Library: Writing competitions

Insight Creative Writing Competition

Competition Key Dates

The optional theme for 2025 is: Soulmates.

2025 Important Dates

Competition Opens: 20 March
Competition Closes: 1September
Longlist Announcement: 1October
Shortlist Announcement: 22 October
Awards Ceremony: TBA

Cash prizes!

Mulga Bill Writing Award

Mulga Bill Awards
Entries are now closed for the 2024 Mulga Bill Writing Award, and winners have been selected!

Check out the award winners; you may wish to enter next year!

State Library Victoria: What's On

Events at the SLV
Check out the many events on offer through the State Library of Victoria. Just visiting this amazing space will make you want to set your keyboard on fire!

Local area competitions

Enter the Boroondara Literary Awards
The 2024 Boroondara Literary Awards are now open. Entries close at 11:59 pm Friday 17 May 2024.

Winners will be announced in late 2024.
Our Young Writers' Competition offers $5,000 in prize money across various sections. The Open Short Story Competition awards $1,500 to its first place winner.

International opportunities

NaNoWriMo - write a novel in a month
What Is NaNoWriMo?
National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with 50,000 words of a brand new novel. They enter the month as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents. They leave novelists.

What Matters writing competition

What Matters Writing Competition

Inspired by Gough Whitlam's commitment to involving young people in shaping Australia's future, the What Matters? writing competition is currently open to school students in years 5 to 12 from Australia. Responding to the simple question 'what matters?', entrants are free to express their views on any matter they care about.

Part writing exercise, part civics and citizenship activity, What Matters? is the perfect opportunity to empower students to raise their voices on issues that are important to them and know that their perspectives are valuable, no matter their age, background or viewpoint. Entries can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry or prose of up to 600 words, and submitted online.

Entries close 16 May 2025

Writers Victoria

Writers Victoria
Writers Victoria supports and connects all types of writers at all stages of their writing careers. The website also provides a list of potential competitions for young writers.

Poetry competitions

Student poetry competition

Entries closed May 2024.

Winners

Theme Awe

Furious Fiction

Write the World
Each month, Write the World holds a new competition developed around a particular idea or genre of writing, such as poetry, fantasy, sports journalism, or flash fiction. Competitions encourage you to dig deeper into the writing process, try out new genres, and share your work with a sea of eager readers.

And because a first draft is never perfect, you have the chance to receive peer and expert feedback before submitting your final piece.

Indigo Teen Hub

IndigoTeen Magazine is a literary periodical created for teenagers and by teenagers.
It features the most successful text and imagery submissions from children and young people from 13 to 19 years old: short stories, essays, and novellas, memes, and comics, fan fiction and poetry, graphic design and artwork. It’s a collection of literary pieces that reflects the world of modern teenagers.
Are you a teen who loves English? Do you want to test your illustrator’s skills or other visual art talents? Let your mind shine bright and be enjoyed! We are eager to hear from you and let your creation be part of our magazine.

Little Black Dress Spooky Story Competition

The KSP Writers' Centre is proud to present this annual spooky story competition, sponsored by Little Black Dress Productions
The KSP Writers' Centre is proud to present this annual spooky story competition, sponsored by Little Black Dress Productions. The judges will be looking for good quality original, unpublished writing with engaging characters and a compelling narrative including an excellent beginning, middle and end. Entries must be rated PG and should address the set theme.
Results will be announced at an awards ceremony and book launch event in winter (August) and published on social media and the KSP website thereafter. Shortlisted entrants will be contacted prior to the awards ceremony with an invitation to attend and read an extract of their entry.
Entries closed for 2024.

Mount Scopus students published 2021

Rich and Rare Anthology 2021
The complete collection of winning, shortlisted and commended poems from the 2021 competition, Dorothea MacKellar Poetry Awards. Two Mount Scopus students, (year 7 2021) have a poem in this volume.

Science Writing and Poster Competition

Science writing and poster competition.

The 2025 Theme is Decoding the Universe: Exploring the Unknown with Nature’s Hidden Language.

Creative Writing topics:

1. Whispers of the Stars: A Journey into Quantum space.
2. Secrets of the Sun: A Journey with Photons/
3. A Quest for the Golden Ratio.
4. The Butterfly Effect.

Posters & Scientific Wallcharts

1. How Tiny Particles Shape Big Things.
2. The Science of Quantum Cryptography.
3. AI and Quantum Science: The Future of Technology.
4. Quantum Science Driving Innovation in Medicine.

See Ms Alagappan for further details.

National competitions

Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards
The Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards seek to capture the imaginations of school students across Australia, inspiring them to express their thoughts and feelings through the medium of poetry in their pursuit of literary excellence. The standard of entries year after year is consistently high, yet the winning poems never cease to impress the judges. From reading the entries of both the primary and secondary students, one can get an idea of the current events and issues that have had a great impact on young Australians over the decades.

The awards are held every year between the 1 March and the 30 June with the winners announced on the first Friday in September.
Hachette Australia Prize.
The Hachette Australia Prize for Young Writers gives young writers the opportunity to hone their skills under the guidance of some of Australia’s favourite authors. The Prize aims to ignite passion for creative writing and poetry in the minds of Australia’s secondary school students, and to encourage them to pursue writing and publishing opportunities inside and outside of the classroom.

Voiceworks

Voiceworks

Little Stories. Big Ideas.

We love your stories.
Little Stories, Big Ideas is a flash fiction competition for Australian Secondary School Students.
Winners will be chosen from 2 categories, Years 7 to 9 and Years 10 to 12.
We hope to inspire and encourage the next generation of storytellers.
The competition runs four times per year, and is free to enter.
Each quarterly competition will have a theme.
Entries must be 100 words or less, and incorporate the current theme.
How the theme is included is up to the imagination of the writer.
Any literary style is welcome – short-story form, poem, haiku, limerick, song – but entries must be in English.
Entries close 28 June 2024.

Secondary Library: Writing competitions

Writing Competitions 2025