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Creative Writing

Creative Writing is a medium used to communicate, resist, provoke and seek or find understanding. Our research investigates the artistic, historical, cultural and societal impacts of the written word.

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Creative Writing at Melbourne

Academic staff in the Creative Writing program are widely published writers, industry professionals, and leading researchers in areas including:

  • Fiction, non-fiction and poetry, creative nonfiction
  • Contemporary Australian writing and Aboriginal literature
  • Writing for screen, theatre, live art, videogames and performance
  • Graphic narratives and experimental poetics
  • The theory and teaching of creative writing, creativity and composition

Our graduate students and researchers position Creative Writing as political, cultural, and critical discourse. We value working and writing together: generating connection, collaboration, and collegiality.

Our academic staff publish on dynamic and diverse topics including living poetry, video games, storytelling and genre-shifting work. Recent examples of this published work include a project investigating the history of contemporary Australian comics, an examination of the function of the theatre in Western culture and a project exploring artistic innovation and the work of disability artists in Australia.

View our staff

Featured writing

Academic staff within the Creative Writing program are also published authors in genres such as creative non-fiction, graphic memoir, poetry and fiction.

Death at the Dog Park

Death at the Dog Park (Glom Press, 2021) – Dr Radha O’Meara, Senior Lecturer and Eloise Grills

Once Upon a Pixel

Once Upon a Pixel (CRC Press, 2019) – Dr Eddie Paterson, Head of Program

Axiomatic (Brow Books, 2018) – Dr Maria Tumarkin, Senior Lecturer

Intention and Unintention

Intention and Unintention or the Hyperconscious in Contemporary Lyric Impulse (Aracadia Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2018) – Dr Grant Caldwell, Senior Lecturer

Walk Back Over

Walk Back Over (Cordite Books, 2018) – Dr Jeanine Leanne, Senior Lecturer

Drawing Sybylla

Drawing Sybylla: The Real and Imagined Lives of Australian (UWA Press, 2017) – Dr Odette Kelada

Rendition for Harp and Kalashnikov (Puncher & Wattmann, 2017) – Dr Amanda Johnson

The Xenotext

The Xenotext: Book 1 (Coach House Books, 2015) – Professor Christian Bök

More featured Creative Writing

Featured research

Our research engages with a wide audience through industry and community partnerships, and is supported by a range of funding sources, including the Australian Research Council (ARC).

Disability and the Performing Arts in Australia: The Last Avant Garde

The Last Avant Garde is an ARC Linkage project exploring artistic innovation and the work of disability artists in Australia.

Contemporary Australian Comics 1980-2020: A New History

An ARC Linkage project mapping the contemporary history and cultural impact of comics as a narrative art form in Australia.

Indigenous Storytelling and the Living Archive of Aboriginal Knowledge

An ARC Discovery Indigenous Fellowship project that aims to develop a non-linear, interactive archiving system in collaboration with Aboriginal people.

More featured research

Study with us

Develop your expertise in Creative Writing through our undergraduate, higher degree and other programs.

Learn more about applying for high degree programs, including Graduate research and Graduate coursework, in which students participate in writing, publication, thesis and seminar programs designed to foster creative and critical debate.

Undergraduate

  • Bachelor of Arts Creative Writing Major
  • Bachelor of Arts (Degree with Honours)

Graduate coursework

  • Graduate Certificate in Arts
  • Graduate Diploma in Arts
  • Graduate Certificate in Arts (Advanced)
  • Graduate Diploma in Arts (Advanced)
  • Master of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing

Graduate research

  • Master of Arts (Thesis Only)
  • Master of Arts (Advanced Seminar and Shorter Thesis)
  • Doctor of Philosophy – Arts

Meet our Creative Writing staff

Academic staff in the Creative Writing program are leading teachers, researchers and industry professionals, with expertise across fiction, creative non-fiction, screenwriting, graphic novels, critical scholarly work and beyond. Our award-winning staff have also been recently recognised across the industry – Maria Tumurkin has received the  Windham Campbell Prize for nonfiction in Australia and Amanda Johnson received the 2020 Peter Porter Poetry Prize.

Profile picture of Grant Caldwell

Dr Grant Caldwell

Profile picture of Odette Kelada

Dr Odette Kelada

Profile picture of Jeanine Leane

A/Prof Jeanine Leane

Profile picture of Elizabeth MacFarlane

Dr Elizabeth MacFarlane

Profile picture of Cath Moore

Dr Cath Moore

Profile picture of Nadia Niaz

Dr Nadia Niaz

Profile picture of Radha O'Meara

Dr Radha O'Meara

Profile picture of Eddie Paterson

A/Prof Eddie Paterson

Profile picture of Hayley Singer

Dr Hayley Singer

Profile picture of Maria Tumarkin

A/Prof Maria Tumarkin

Creative Writing honorary staff

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History of Creative Writing on AustLit

Search for works and authors, exhibitions, trails, and research projects, full-text creative and life writing.

The history of creative writing on AustLit is the history of Australian Literature itself.

From 1999, when AustLit's consortium of scholars and librarians was first formed, AustLit has worked to create and enhance rich bio-bibliographical records on Australian literature, story-telling, and print culture, serving as a repository for the ways in which Australians tell stories and for the stories that are told about Australia.

AustLit records creative writing from the earliest stories to the most recent publications, from literary fiction to all genres, from collected works of poetry to autobiography and memoir, as well as the works that are written about these works.

'Creative Writing', in this context, includes all the AustLit data that is not specifically addressed in the other categories of Stage & Screen , Children's & YA Literature , Criticism , and BlackWords . Under the umbrella of 'Creative Writing' comes life writing of all forms, novels, short stories, graphic novels, correspondence, and poetry.

AustLit is also home to rich research projects about the multitude of creative writing produced by Australians and about Australia, from analyses of steampunk, pulp fiction and medievalism to surveys of archival holdings on censored books, from projects about belonging and leaving to explorations of moments of extreme socio-political impact, such as World War I.

AustLit records details of tens of thousands of novels, auto/biographies, poetry collections, and short-story collections.

Looking for more information? Read all about AustLit .

Use the box below for a keyword search, or use Advanced Search for more targeted and complex searches.

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Recent Additions

AustLit regularly collates specific subsets of our data and presents them as online exhibitions or information trails. We also support and publish research projects by AustLit staff and external researchers.

You can find all the exhibitions and trails by checking out AustLit's research page , or explore the tiles below for specific exhibitions and AustLit publications.

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Writing Disability in Australia

Led by Dr Jessica White, Writing Disability in Australia aggregates writing on disability in AustLit into a searchable index, with the aim of drawing attention to the ways in which Australian writers have represented disability. It illuminates the structures and assumptions of ableism, highlights the significant and imaginative achievements of writers with disability, and draws attention to the resourceful ways in which people with disability navigate their everyday lives.

Writing with Disability was inaugurated in 2018, launched in 2019, and is still being added to.

Explore Writing Disability in Australia .

Header image: Ramp stairs at Hammersmith & Fulham College, by Bill Smith, 8 August 2018. Unmodified. CC BY 2.0. Source .

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Waves of Fiction

A research project launched in 2018 and still under development, Waves of Fiction is led by Dr Rebecca Olive from the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, University of Queensland. Waves of Fiction: Surfing in Australian Literature takes as its starting point the contention that despite the fame of Tim Winton and Puberty Blues , there is a much longer history of surf writing that includes diverse genres, forms, characters, and authors. Yet we know little about that collective body of work, nor what new things it can tell us about surfing, which, although so prolific in our coastal lives, remains little understood, even by surfers themselves.

Explore Waves of Fiction .

(Image credit: Green wave, photograph by Vladimir Kudinov. CC0. Reproduced via Pexels.)

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Speculations

Established in 2011, 'Speculations' is a substantial study of Australian popular fiction. Under the leadership of Professor Van Ikin, Dr Toni Johnson-Woods, and Dr Kim Wilkins, AustLit researchers undertook sustained work in enhancing records for science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers and works, including film and television.

Where popular fiction has often been overlooked in traditional bibliographies, 'Speculations' helps expand understandings of how, when, where, and in what quantities Australian authors are writing speculative fiction.

The gathering of this content is still ongoing.

Click here to explore this research project .

(Image credit: details of illustration from Norma K. Hemming's 'Amazons of the Asteroids', originally published in Thrills Incorporated .)

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World War I

'World War I in Australian Literary Culture' is a specialist AustLit research project, initiated in 2012 and led by researcher Robert Thomson , that expands and refines the database's coverage of the ways in which the Great War is represented in all forms of storytelling.

As one of the first research projects to be designed on AustLit's new platform, 'World War I in Australian Literary Culture' is supported by richly interactive online exhibitions, which draw out aspects of the war years from professional digger-entertainers to women's magazine fiction, Indigenous soldiers to wartime songs.

Click here to explore this research project and exhibitions .

(Image credit: George Washington Lambert's 'Anzac, the landing 1915', c.1920-1922. Reproduced via Wikimedia Commons.)

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Beyond Goggles and Corsets

Researched, compiled, and written by Dr Catriona Mills and Geoffrey Hondroudakis, Beyond Goggles and Corsets: Australian Steampunk is a unique AustLit research project: a long, richly illustrated essay accompanied by curated reading lists, Beyond Goggles and Corsets identifies and describes Australian-written steampunk works, and sets out the history and thematic concerns of Australian steampunk from the earliest proto-steampunk works to the present day.

Click here to read Beyond Goggles and Corsets .

(Image credit: Triptych of separate portraits of, from left to right, Amy Johnson, Bell Mullins, and Bessie Coleman. See full image credit .)

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Australian Popular Medievalism

Established by Dr Kim Wilkins in 2009, Australian Popular Medievalism demonstrates how strongly Australian popular fiction engages with the medieval, tracing more than 250 popular adult novels, published between 1995 and 2010, that feature Europe in the Middle Ages either as an actual setting or as a source for adapting images and ideas.

From the accompanying peer-reviewed essay:

It is interesting to compare Fradenburg's observations about the Middle Ages with Ken Gelder's about the sets of differences with which literary culture distinguishes literary fiction from popular fiction. Literary fiction is 'complex', popular fiction is 'simple'; literary fiction is about 'real life', popular fiction is 'fantasy'; literary fiction is 'cerebral', popular fiction is 'sensuous'; literary fiction is 'restrained', popular fiction is 'excessive' (19). Popular fiction, like the pre-modern, is irrational and curiously flat, compared to literary fiction which, like the modern, knows itself and can therefore produce objects of cultural value. By this comparison, popular fiction can actually be seen to share a privileged relationship with medievalism.

(Image credit: Edmund Leighton's 'The End of the Song' [Tristian and Isolde], 1902. Reproduced via Wikimedia Commons.)

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Pulp Fiction

Under the guidance of project leader Dr Toni Johnson-Woods , 'Pulp Fiction' mapped Australia's popular publishing industry over the twenty years between 1939 and 1959, creating and enhancing records for over 100 authors and cover artists and more then 2000 titles.

Click here to explore the project .

(Image credit: detail from the cover of Carter Brown's Walk Softly, Witch , reproduced courtesy of AustLit.)

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Banned in Australia

The outcome of Dr Nicole Moore 's Australian Research Council Discovery Project, 'Banned in Australia' presents the impact of censorship on reading in Australia between 1901 and 1973. Unlike most of AustLit's research projects, 'Banned in Australia' includes works from all over the world, including Australian authors published overseas, and sets out some 500 works whose import into Australia was banned during the first seventy years of the twentieth century.

'Banned in Australia' is a unique view of censorship and the movement of books into and out of Australia.

(Image: cropped section of the cover image for Penguin's anniversary edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover . Reproduced courtesy of Penguin's website.)

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Australian Multicultural Writers

Drawing on and expanding a series of bibliographies going back as far 1973, 'Australian Multicultural Writers' provides biographical and bibliographical information about writers who identify with cultural heritages other than Anglo-Celtic.

As Professor Wenche Ommundsen notes in her accompanying essay:

In the context of an increasingly globalised world, multicultural literary traditions play important roles as mediators between local (or national) and global cultural forces. Multicultural Australian writing represents the global within the local; it responds to pressures and change within Australian society and culture, but is also, and increasingly, in tune with global developments such as rapid international communication and travel, postcolonial and diasporic literary traditions and transnational popular culture.

Click here to explore the research project .

(Image credit: section from a 1765 de l'Isle globe, 'generous in its depiction of the Mississippi River and showing a fictional Northwest passage'. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.)

AustLit also publishes collections of original and archival creative and autobiographical writing.

Click on one of the images below to view the collections.

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Parasols and Prosthetic Limbs

Parasols and Prosthetic Limbs : The World War I Magazine Fiction of Sumner Locke

Edited and compiled by Dr Catriona Mills

A collection of twelve short stories published by Sumner Locke in Australian newspapers and magazines during the early years of the war, these stories were republished on 18 October 2017, the centenary of Locke's death.

Explore Parasols and Prosthetic Limbs .

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Growing Up Indigenous

A small collection of biographical stories that capture the experience of growing up in Australia as an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person. The authors range in age from young adults to older women and men but common to all of their experience is resilience and respect.

Explore Growing Up Indigenous .

Header image: Glasshouse Mountains from Maleny Botanic Gardens, photograph by Andy Hay, December 2015, CC2.0 (via Flickr).

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Australian Drama Archive

Established in 2016 with funding from the Ian Potter Foundation, the Australian Drama Archive aims to digitise and research a collection of Australian plays from the twentieth century up to the 1960s and bring them to life again through publication, production, and new research.

Explore the Australian Drama Archive .

Header image: Print by artist Leon Bakst (cropped) (1927), via the New York Public Library Digital Collections.

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If you can read this webpage, then you have all you need to access our range of online courses at the Australian Writers’ Centre! We offer three kinds of online course:

Online LIVE: With these courses, you participate online from the comfort of your own home in a live Zoom video-based classroom. Your tutor and your classmates are right there with you in real time.

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English & creative writing

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English and creative writing at UNSW School of the Arts & Media houses a passionate group of writers and scholars working in diverse fields. Our research consistently achieves high rankings. In the latest (2018) Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) assessment, we scored 5 for creative writing (well above world standard) and 4 for literary studies (above world standard). 

Our internationally renowned researchers produce monographs, novels, poetry collections, edited collections and essays in major international journals. We attract significant external funding from the Australia Council and Australian Research Council (ARC). We also receive support from international funding bodies such as the Research England Development Fund, the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences Research Council, the Swedish Research Council and the Flemish Research Foundation (FWO). 

Our academics include the presidents of the Australasian Association for Literature and the Association for the Study of the Australian Literature (ASAL), the incoming president of the International Society for the Study of Narrative, as well as past and present executive members of the Australian University Heads of English.

English and creative writing at UNSW Sydney is home to a thriving postgraduate research culture, with a strong record of successful completions in a broad range of areas. We particularly welcome research proposals in any of the fields below. 

Research strengths

UNSW School of the Arts & Media is the largest hub globally for research in Australian literature. We address the global dimensions of Australian writing, including diasporic and expatriate writing, writing by refugees and asylum seekers, Indigenous writers alongside continuing engagement with more foundational works. 

Among our many recent publications are monographs on Christina Stead and America, and on literary islands and colonialism, as well as edited collections on the works of Elizabeth Harrower, Antigone Kefala and Shirley Hazzard. Our academics include the president and two former presidents of the peak scholarly body ASAL. We also host Southerly, Australia’s oldest literary journal. 

The large and constant flow of local and international postgraduate students expand and invigorate our research strength in contemporary studies in Australian literature. Our many institutional and publishing activities create a wealth of opportunities for our students’ academic and professional development. 

We welcome enquiries about higher degree research (HDR) supervision across all areas of Australian literature. Recent projects include: queer Australian masculinities; the Australian girl; contemporary Indigenous women’s writing; sound and Australian literature; Brian Castro and weird English; Indigenous speculative writing and ecopoetics; Australia and utopia; studies of Antigone Kefala and Eleanor Dark; and a biography of Marjorie Barnard. 

UNSW School of the Arts & Media has a long history of excellence in modernist studies. Our research spans a wide variety of topics within the broad field of modernist studies, including modernist poetics, the modernist novel, modernist periodical studies, and modernism and media. 

Our research addresses the formal experiments and political meanings of modernism’s responses to and critiques of global modernity. Recent publications include edited collections on modernism and sound, modernism and technology, and modernism and work. Our academics also regularly publish articles on modernist and modernism-adjacent subjects in leading journals. Among our academics are the treasurer of the Australasian Modernist Studies Network and two editors of the network’s journal Affirmations: of the modern.

Our school welcomes research proposals on all aspects of modernist literature and culture. Recent projects include: studies of rhythm in modernist short fiction; philosophical poetry in a time of crisis; bodily experience in the writing of Virginia Woolf; architectural subjectivity in the fiction of Elizabeth Bowen, Jean Rhys and Christina Stead; and ‘textual becoming’ in Proust.

UNSW School of the Arts & Media’s renowned literary historical research fosters interdisciplinary dialogues between literature and artificial intelligence, literature and visual culture, literature and sound, literature and the history of political struggle, book history and literary biography.  

Our research includes work on historical poetics and the historical development of the novel, with a strong focus on archival research. Work includes an editorial project on Charlotte Bronte and a large collaborative project on ‘Rioting and the literary archive’, which traces literature’s enduring engagement with forms of popular resistance and riotous assembly. 

Recent publications include a range of monographs and edited collections, as well as pieces in major international journals, such as ELH, NLH, Textual Practice, Victorian Studies, Modernism/Modernity, Studies in the Novel, and NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction. Our academics have edited special issues of Poetics Today, on narrative theory and the history of the novel, and of Critical Quarterly, on historical poetics and the problem of exemplarity. Forthcoming publications include an edited collection on ‘Writing the global riot: literature in a time of crisis’, the ‘Edinburgh companion to literary sound studies’ and the authorised biography of Australian-US author Shirley Hazzard. UNSW is also home to the  Juvenilia Press .  

Postgraduate supervision encompasses diverse areas of literary history, ranging from single-author studies to more expansive thematic and historical approaches. Projects include: studies of voice in the 19th-century novel; literary precarity; reading domestic spaces; Thomas Chatterton and the performance of literary professionalism; writer characters in fiction from the 1890s to the present; the Anthropocene in science fiction; time and empathy in cognitive literary criticism; and the sonic animal in 19th-century fiction. 

UNSW School of the Arts & Media has a strong focus on literary theory and literary approaches to philosophy. Our researchers are experts in queer theory, feminism, narratology, postcolonial theory, animal studies, ecocriticism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Derridean and de Manian deconstruction and Deleuze studies. We engage with figures as diverse as Søren Kierkegaard, Alain Badiou, Maurice Blanchot, Bruno Latour, Peter Sloterdijk, Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, G. W. F. Hegel, Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Žižek and Jacques Lacan.  

The work of our academics has appeared in monographs and journals such as symploke, Substance, Angelaki, Continental Philosophy Review, Filozofski vestnik and Crisis & Critique. We also engage in large international and national research projects investigating literary and critical climate change. Forthcoming publications include the ‘Routledge companion to narrative theory’ which locates the novel in the context of the larger multidisciplinary study of narrative, and a special issue of S: Journal on the work of the contemporary French philosopher Barbara Cassin. 

UNSW School of the Arts & Media’s research in world literatures spans the fields of postcolonial, diasporic and transnational literary studies. Australia’s settler colonial history means we engage in ways that contribute to and shape the dynamic fields of postcolonial and transnational writing. We focus on works in English, in translation and in other languages. One key question is: What do we do with texts when they circulate outside their context of origin?  

From the deployment of big data to close textual analysis, our research examines both the aesthetics and politics of literary representation in context, as well as the modes of literary production and the circulations of literature in globalised modernity.  

We’re interested in the networks of Australia’s diverse writing cultures and the circulation of their work in global contexts. Our publications range from colonialist histories and imaginaries to the production and circulation of contemporary Iranian literature, to questions of trans-Indigenous writing and representation.  

Recent and forthcoming monographs by our academics include Christina Stead and America, the imaginary geographies of colonialism and Iranian literature since the revolution. Themed issues of Southerly include the writing of detained refugees, the Persian diaspora, the inter-generational legacies of migration in Australia and the mobility of textual circulation. 

We have many local and international postgraduate students working on topics ranging from Irish-language poetics to Iranian women’s romance fiction, to contemporary African fiction. Our school is a long-standing sponsor of the Institute of World Literature (Harvard University) and UNSW academics and postgraduate students regularly participate in the institute’s summer programs. PhD projects include: post-Independence African novels; psychogeography and the novel; domestic violence in postcolonial writing; and Irish women’s writing. 

Creative writing at UNSW School of the Arts & Media is a dynamic program, boasting researchers who are award-winning novelists and poets. Our academics have won numerous prizes including the Literary Fiction Book of the Year in the Australian Book Industry Awards, the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the Best Young Australian Novelist award. They have also been shortlisted for the Victorian and NSW Premier’s Awards and the Newcastle Poetry Prize. 

We have judged major prizes such as the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the ALS Gold Medal. We publish creative work in Australia’s top literary journals such as Meanjin, Overland, Island, Westerly, Southerly, Cordite Poetry Review and Australian Poetry Journal. 

Our researchers are committed to public and cultural engagement and frequently collaborate with the broader publishing industry and media outlets. We have longstanding relationships with the Adelaide International Festival, Tasmanian Writers’ Festival, Perth Writers’ Festival, Asialink, Varuna, The Writers’ House and the Oxford Centre for Life Writing at Wolfson College, Oxford University. 

Editing and publishing at the School of the Arts & Media plays a leading role in the dissemination of traditional and non-traditional research. We explore new forms of scholarly communication as editors and editorial board members of academic journals such as Affirmations, Southerly, S: Journal, Continental Thought & Theory, Journal of World Literature and Iranian Studies. 

We promote strong international outreach through our founding role in Open Humanities Press, which publishes open-access journals and books in a variety of humanities fields. Bernard Stiegler, Timothy Morton, Claire Colebrook, Joanna Zylinska and Isabelle Stengers, among others, have been published recently. 

Southerly magazine is Australia’s oldest literary journal and publishes scholarly work on Australian literature alongside creative fiction and prose. Southerly is particularly notable among Australia’s literary journals for publishing more fiction and poetry, and it also publishes essays, commentary and reviews. The themed component of each issue is often prompted by research interests of UNSW academics including intergenerational migrant writing; Utopian fiction; writing by refugees in Australian detention centres; and transnational writing cultures of the Persian diaspora in Australia. 

Our academics are also working on Live Crossings , an online open-access creative practice magazine publishing work by refugees and asylum-seekers as well as Indigenous writers and artists.

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Creative Writing

You love to write, but writing is so much more than the ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling’. It is a craft, an art, and every art requires patient apprenticeship, training, and professional encouragement.

Creative Writing

Studying Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide gives you all that and more. Our world-class writers teach their craft on the basis of years of experience, award-winning publications, and hundreds of hours in the classroom. In lectures, they impart their knowledge with authority and style; and in interactive workshop seminars, they allow you to experiment, share, revise, and improve your work with a form of continuous feedback and peer review. You will learn to create skilful short stories, poems, life-writing, and creative non-fiction, and how to develop and sustain your own life-long reflective writing practices, on the basis of living examples of literary excellence. We are proud that Nobel Prize winner Prof. John JM Coetzee ( Disgrace ) has been associated with the Department for 20 years. We are passionate about our love of the craft of writing, and we want you to share in that passion by becoming the best writer you can be.

Our teaching

The Department of English, Creative Writing and Film offers a large range of undergraduate courses in Creative Writing. Our introductory first-year course in ‘the Essentials’ equips you with most of the fundamental skills you will need to pursue writing at the highest levels. At senior levels, we offer a wide range of courses: The Short Story, Contemporary Poetry, Novel Writing, Travel Writing, Script-Writing, Posthuman Writing, Editing for Writers, Political Writing, Apocalypse Fiction, and more.  Come and sample what it is like to write a literary text … and stay for the major in Creative Writing!

Our research

The Department of English and Creative Writing has a vibrant research culture, and contributes world-class monographs, research papers, and related outputs in many areas.

We welcome all inquiries to study with us at postgraduate as well as undergraduate levels in Creative Writing.

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Creative writing, major overview.

Available in these courses

If you love reading, this major offers you the opportunity to explore your feelings, thoughts and ideas in the written form. Unleash and explore your creative potential across the avant-garde, cross-genre and experimental forms of writing.

You’ll also be encouraged to critically test contemporary theoretical and philosophical schools of thought in all forms of writing.

Gain focused knowledge on: fiction, poetry, non-fiction, autobiography theatre and screen - and more.

Related study areas

  • Arts, humanities and social sciences
  • Culture and communication
  • Music, visual and performing arts

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These courses will teach you the craft behind different writing styles, so you can discover what inspires you most. You can search short courses or full qualifications. Either way, you will learn from published authors and editors who can guide you towards wherever you want to be in your writing career. 

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Bachelor of Arts

An arts degree that no one else has

Make your degree unique and study what interests you. Analyse critically, think creatively and problem-solve at work or in everyday life. Complete foundational studies then tailor your degree with a major. Create a portfolio and build your connections.

3 years full time or part time equivalent

Available majors

  • Ancient History , 
  • Applied Ethics , 
  • Creative Writing , 
  • Indigenous Studies , 
  • International Relations , 
  • Modern History , 
  • Philosophy , 
  • Politics , 

Undergraduate | GRF-ART-DEG

Innovators, communicators and creators start here!

Develop critical thinking, writing, and research skills in demand across all industries. You can follow your passion with majors and electives that interest you. Develop connections through peer learning, networking, and work experience.

  • Art History , 
  • Criminal Justice , 
  • Journalism , 
  • Literature , 
  • Public Relations , 
  • Screen and Media Studies , 

Undergraduate | USQ-ACW-DEG

Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing)

Undergraduate | CUR-CWP-DEG

Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing) (Professional Writing and Publishing)

Write your own stories and develop the work of others

Develop your own voice as you explore genres including poetry. You’ll learn how to plan and research your projects. Polish your grammar, practice proofreading and copyediting. Witness words transforming from wispy thoughts to professional pieces.

Online & on-campus

Discover 80 ways to study creative writing with leading Australian universities.

Need help choosing the right course?

Our student advisors are here to guide you with expert advice on:

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Creative writing study FAQs

What is a creative writing course.

A creative writing course teaches you how to approach different styles of writing, like fiction, short fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction. You will be encouraged to share your work so it can be critiqued by others, which helps you develop your skills to a publishable standard. 

What do you learn in a creative writing course?

Creative writing courses are both inspiring and practical. You’re given the space to experiment with your own ideas, but you also learn writing for different genres, platforms and formats. 

Depending on your course, you’ll learn how to:

  • kickstart your creativity
  • develop a distinctive writing style
  • think critically about work produced by other writers 
  • write across areas like short fiction, long-form fiction, genre fiction, poetry and children’s fiction
  • act on feedback and edit your own work
  • deliver critical feedback during virtual workshop discussions
  • submit your work for publication
  • navigate the Australian publishing industry.

Why should I study creative writing?

There are countless reasons to study creative writing. Enrol if you want to develop your craft, write professionally, or inspire yourself artistically. You’ll have the space to work on projects that matter to you, which could lead to a publishable story, collection or manuscript that you might not have finished otherwise. 

You’ll gain incredibly valuable knowledge about the path to publication from people who’ve been there. And you’ll network with like-minded creatives from all over the country. These connections often end up being the writers, editors and publishers you collaborate with in your career.   

Why should I study an online course in creative writing?

It’s not uncommon to juggle your creative projects with other work. Studying online gives you the time and flexibility to do that. Plus, you’re not restricted by location—you can access universities from across Australia. This has its advantages. It means you can choose your course based on the writing teachers who appeal to you most.  

Why should I study online through Open Universities Australia?

There are a lot of reasons to study your course online through us.

  • You can enrol without entry requirements  We have a unique open-door policy  that makes it possible for everyone to enrol in university study, no matter their academic history. If you don’t meet the entry requirements for a degree, we’ll help you get in through single undergraduate subjects and transition into a qualification from there.
  • You have total control over how you study Upskill without committing to a whole degree upfront. Or enrol in a full degree, but take it a subject at a time. We’ll introduce you to flexible study options you didn’t even know about, so you can fit uni around what matters to you.
  • You’ll graduate with the same qualification as an on-campus student Once you enrol through us, you’ll study online with the university that provides your degree. This means that when you complete your qualification, you’ll graduate with the same degree as on-campus students.
  • We’ll help you navigate the university world Our friendly student advisors will be your guide every step of the enrolment journey. They'll help you compare universities, choose a course, provide documentation and understand your finance options.

How long is a creative writing course?

It depends on the course and whether you choose something short or long-term. Here’s a general guide: 

If you study a degree in creative writing through Open Universities Australia, you have the flexibility to choose how many subjects you take per term. This means you can complete your qualification at a faster or slower pace than you would on campus.   

Is creative writing a difficult course?

Creative writing is a skill that requires practice and patience—but it’s a skill anyone can learn with the right guidance. Many of our students find workshopping to be the hardest thing about their course, because they can’t help taking the feedback about their work personally. It’s tricky to separate yourself from your writing, but your tutors and peers only have your development in mind. If you’re open to a bit of constructive criticism, you should find your course fun and rewardingly challenging. 

What jobs can you get with a creative writing degree?

Creative writing graduates have the critical thinking and writing skills to work across all sorts of industries. Students commonly pursue work as:

  • Journalists
  • Copywriters 
  • Digital marketers
  • Magazine publishers and editors
  • Book publishers and editors
  • Screenwriters
  • Arts administrators

How do I know if I’m eligible to apply for a course?

Before starting an enrolment, it’s important to read the entry requirements for your chosen course to ensure that you’re eligible to apply. If you don’t quite meet the requirements, we may be able to help you find a pathway into your course through open-entry subjects, which anyone can study.

Chat with us  to find out more.

How do I enrol?

Here at Open Universities Australia, we make enrolling online as straightforward as possible. To get started, find the course for you by browsing the options on this page. You can also compare different qualifications using our handy comparison tool , or request help from one of our student advisors.

When you’ve made your choice, click ‘Apply now’ on the relevant course page and follow the prompts to begin your enrolment. We’ll ask you to supply some supporting documentation, including proof of your identity, your tax file number, and a unique student identifier (USI)  during this process.

Your university will get in touch with you via email to confirm whether or not your application has been successful.

If you get stuck at any time, reach out to us  and we’ll talk you through it.

You can also take a look at our online self-service enrolling instructions .

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39 Best universities for Creative Writing in Australia

Updated: February 29, 2024

  • Art & Design
  • Computer Science
  • Engineering
  • Environmental Science
  • Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
  • Mathematics

Below is a list of best universities in Australia ranked based on their research performance in Creative Writing. A graph of 194K citations received by 19.3K academic papers made by 39 universities in Australia was used to calculate publications' ratings, which then were adjusted for release dates and added to final scores.

We don't distinguish between undergraduate and graduate programs nor do we adjust for current majors offered. You can find information about granted degrees on a university page but always double-check with the university website.

Please note that our approach to subject rankings is based on scientific outputs and heavily biased on art-related topics towards institutions with computer science research profiles.

1. University of Sydney

For Creative Writing

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2. University of Melbourne

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3. Monash University

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4. University of Queensland

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5. University of New South Wales

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6. Griffith University

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7. Macquarie University

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8. Deakin University

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9. La Trobe University

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10. Western Sydney University

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11. Australian National University

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12. University of Technology Sydney

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13. University of Wollongong

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14. Queensland University of Technology

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15. Flinders University

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16. University of South Australia

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17. Curtin University

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18. University of Tasmania

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19. RMIT University

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20. University of Newcastle

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21. University of Adelaide

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22. University of Western Australia

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23. Charles Sturt University

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24. Australian Catholic University

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25. Swinburne University of Technology

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26. Edith Cowan University

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27. University of New England, Australia

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28. James Cook University

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29. University of Canberra

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30. Murdoch University

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31. Victoria University

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32. Southern Cross University

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33. University of the Sunshine Coast

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34. University of Southern Queensland

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35. Central Queensland University

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36. Federation University Australia

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37. Charles Darwin University

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38. Bond University

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39. University of Notre Dame Australia

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The best cities to study Creative Writing in Australia based on the number of universities and their ranks are Sydney , Melbourne , Clayton , and St Lucia .

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WritersStudio

Short Story and Other Writing Competitions 2024

Writing competitions 2024.

Listed below are upcoming Short Story competitions and other Writing competitions that you might like to enter. They are listed by submission closing date , not when the competition is open.

Please read any instructions and entry requirements on the competition/awards website.

If you would like your Short Story or Writing Competition to be listed, please email: [email protected]

JANUARY 2024

Romance Writers of Australia

The Romantic Book of the Year (RUBY) is our contest for published novels and novellas by Australian or New Zealand authors. It includes sections for Contemporary, Historical, Suspense, Speculative Fiction, Romantic Elements and Novella.

Romantic novels (40K+) and novellas (10K–40K) which were first published (in digital or print) between 1 January 2023 and 31 December 2023. Limit of 3 entries per entrant.

Entry fee: $30 inc GST (RWAus members), $50 inc GST (Non-members)

Closing Date: Monday 15 January 2024, 5:00pm (AEDT)

Website:  https://romanceaustralia.com/our-contests/

Calibre Essay Prize

Australian Book review

Essays of all kinds: personal or political, literary or speculative, traditional or experimental.

Word limit: Between 2,000 and 5,000

Entry fee: $20 Current ABR subscribers Standard/non-subscribers: $30

Prizes: Winner $10,000

Closing date: 22 January 2024

Website: https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/prizes-programs/calibre-prize/2024

black&write! Writing Fellowships 2024

Two Fellowships for unpublished manuscripts by Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writers currently living in Australia.

Two winners will each receive: $15,000 prize money Editorial development with the black&write! Indigenous editors. A publication opportunity with Hachette Australia.

Closing Date: 22 January 2024, 11:59PM (AEST)

Website:  https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/get-involved/awards-and-fellowships/blackwrite/blackwrite-writing-fellowships

Geelong Regional Libraries & Deakin University Local Word Writing Prize

creative writing about australia

The winner of the prize will receive a cash prize of $2000 and a one-hour mentoring session with a Deakin University writing practitioner. Publication on GRLC’s website and announcement in GRLC’s e-newsletter

Commended writers will receive a cash prize of $250 and publication on GRLC’s website and announcement in GRLC’s e-newsletter

Closing Date: 27 January 2024

Website:  https://www.grlc.vic.gov.au/local-word-writers-prize

Story Unlikely’s Annual Short Story Contest

No restrictions on genre: fantasy, sci-fi, memoir, fiction/nonfiction.

Word limit: 4,500 words

Entry fee: free!

Prizes: Winner $750, Second place $500, Third place $250

Closing date: 31 January 2024

Website: https://www.storyunlikely.com/#contest

FEBRUARY 2024

Forty South Logo

Short stories up to 3,000 words having an island, or island-resonant, theme.

Word limit: 3,000 words

Prizes: Winner $500

A selection of the best entries will be published in the  Forty South Short Story Anthology 2024 .

Closing date: 14 February 2024

Website: https://www.fortysouth.com.au/tasmanian-writers-prize

Mulga Bill Writing Award logo. Pennyfarthing illustration

Goldfields Libraries and Eaglehawk Festivals Inc. are calling for entries from writers all over Australia for the annual Mulga Bill Writing Award. Writers are encouraged to take inspiration from the theme ‘mystical waters’, and submit a poem (max. 25 lines) or short story (max. 2000 words).

Short story: $500 first prize, $150 second prize Poetry: $200 first prize, $50 second prize

Entry fee: $5

Closing Date: 23 February, 2024

Website:  https://www.ncgrl.vic.gov.au/mulgabillwritingaward

Stringybark Open Short Story Awards 2023

1500 words or fewer in length, have a link to Australia in it, and be written for an audience aged 16 and above.

Prizes: An award pool of over $1350 in cash and books

Closing Date: 25 February 2024, 11:59PM (AEST)

Website:  https://www.stringybarkstories.net/competitions/open—open-short-story-awards.html

The Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition

The Margery Allingham Short Mystery Prize is for a single, previously unpublished short story of up to 3,500 words by an author aged 18 years or over on 1 January of the competition year.

The entry fee is £18

First Prize of £500

Closing Date: 29 February 2024

Website: https://thecwa.co.uk/awards-and-competitions/margery-allingham-short-mystery-competition-rules/

The SCWC 2024 Poetry Award 2024

The Award is open to submissions of poems up to 50 lines responding to the theme “gentle”, with four prizes to win totalling $1300.

All winning entries will be published in the South Coast Writers Centre’s 2024 Anthology.

The submission fee per poem is $15/$10 for SCWC members.

Closing Date: 5 March 2023

Website: https://southcoastwriters.org/scwc-poetry-award-2024

Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize 2024

Williamstown Literary Festival Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize 2024

Type: Poems may be on any topic.

Word limit: Poems may be in any form, up to 30 lines in length.

Prizes: First Prize $500

Entry fee: $15, maximum of 2 poems.

Open to all writers aged 18+ residing in Victoria, Australia.

Closing date: 8 March 2024 at midnight

Website:  https://www.willylitfest.org.au/home/writing-prizes/ada-cambridge-writing-prizes/

Little Black Dress Spooky Story Competition

The theme for 2024 is ‘Don’t Look Up’.

Adults: $10 per entry Youth: Free

YOUTH: Max 500 words, one entry only (Australian residents) ADULT: Max 1,200, unlimited entries (WA residents only)

Closing Date: 13 March 2024

Website: https://www.kspwriterscentre.com/spooky-story-competition

Peter Carey Short Story Awards 2024

Moorabool Council

Prizes: Winning entry receives $2000 Runner-up wins $1000. First and second prized stories will also be published in the Spring 2024 edition of Meanjin .

Entry fee is $15 per story

Closing Date: 14 March 2024, 6:00PM (AEDT)

Website:  https://www.moorabool.vic.gov.au/Services-and-support/Libraries/Creative-writing-opportunities/Peter-Carey-Short-Story-Awards-2024#section-3

The Hope Prize Prize 2024

International short story prize that seeks submissions on the themes of hope, courage and resilience.

Word limit: Submissions are to be between 2,000 and 5,000 words.

Prizes: With a $10,000 AUD first prize and all highly commended submissions published in a Simon & Schuster Australia anthology book. All royalties from the book will support the incredible work of Beyond Blue.

Entry fee: $22 per submission.

Closing date: 22 March 2024

Website:  https://www.thehopeprize.com/

Minds Shine Bright Writing Competition 2024

Mine Shine Bright

Entry Fee: $5

Word limits: Up to 2,500 words per entry

Prizes: Combined $1500 plus shortlisted entries will be published in the second Minds Shine Bright Seasons series anthology  Light and Shadow .

Closing Date: 31 March 2024

Website:  https://mindsshinebright.com/

Northern Beaches Writers’ Group Competition

Stories up to 2,500 words that are inspired by the theme of ‘GLASS’, along with at least one copyright-free image that reflects and enhances that story.

Stories can be non-fiction, fiction, or fiction inspired by true events. All genres and styles welcome.

Entry fee: $15. Multiple entries welcome.

Prizes: First place ($250 + online publication), Second place ($100 + online publication).

Closing Date: 31 March 2024 5:00PM (AEDT)

Website:  http://northernbeacheswritersgroup.com/northern-beaches-writers-competition/

ScreenCraft

This competition focuses on true stories, biographies and works in the public domain (published before 1928). Accepting TV and Feature Scripts!

Grand Prize: $1000 cash, Accepted into the ScreenCraft Writer Development Program, personal industry introductions, Exclusive Finalist only workshop.

Website:  https://screencraft.org/screenwriting-contests/

The Plaza Flash Fiction Prize

The Plaza Prizes brand

Website:  https://theplazaprizes.com/competition/the-plaza-flash-fiction-prize-1000-words/

Flash 500

Website:  https://flash500.com/flash-fiction/

Griffith Review

Calling all emerging writers:  Griffith Review is looking for submissions of fiction and creative non-fiction. You can write to any theme you like – but they are looking for new ideas, fresh voices and bold perspectives – work that commands our attention.

Word Limit: 3,500 to 5,000 words

Entry Fee: $25 for non-subscribers and $15 for current subscribers. The entry fee entitles you to a complimentary digital subscription to Griffith Review  valid for six months.

Prizes: The winners will share a prize pool of $20,000, and their work will be published in Griffith Review .

Website:  https://griffithreview.submittable.com/submit

Desperate Literature Prize for Short Fiction

Desperate Literature

The aim of the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize is both to celebrate the best of new short fiction and to give winners the most visibility possible for their writing.

Entry Fee: €20 for the first piece of short fiction and €10 for every further entry with a maximum of five entries per person.

Grand Prize: €2000, A week’s residency at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Consultation with a UK literary agent, A long-form manuscript assessment

2 x Runner-Up Prizes (multiple): €1000

Website:  https://desperateliterature.com/prize/

2024  ABR  Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize

Accepts original work of short fiction of between 2,000 and 5,000 words, written in English.

Entry fee: $20 Current ABR subscribers Standard/non-subscribers: $30 (Also includes digital access to ABR free of charge for four months)

First prize: $6,000 Second prize: $4,000 Third prize: $2,500

Closing date: 22 April 2024

Website: https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/prizes-programs/elizabeth-jolley-story-prize/current-prize

The Plaza Short Story Prize

Entry Fee: Writers can enter any number of times. (£15.00. Subsequent entry: £7.50)

First Prize: £1000 Second Prize: £300 Third Place: £100 Top 10: The 10 shortlisted entries will be published in The Plaza Prizes Anthology 2, which will be launched at their awards ceremony in 2024.

Website:  https://theplazaprizes.com/competition/the-plaza-short-story-prize-5000-words/

Letter Review

The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction Prizes: 2-4 Winners are announced who are published and share in the $1000 USD total prize pool. 10-20 writers Shortlisted. All entries are considered for publication and for submission to the Pushcart. Entry Fee: $0 USD. Word Length: 0 – 5000 words. Details: Open to anyone in the world. There are no genre or theme restrictions. Judges feedback available. Judged blind.

The Letter Review Prize for Poetry Prizes: 2-4 Winners are announced who are published and share in the $1000 USD total prize pool. 10-20 writers Shortlisted. All entries are considered for publication, and for submission to the Pushcart. Entry Fee: $0 USD. Length: 70 lines Details: Open to anyone in the world. There are no style or subject restrictions. Judges’ Feedback available. Judged blind.

The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books Prizes: 2-4 Winners are announced who share in the $1000 USD total prize pool. Winners may choose to have an extract published, and receive a letter of recommendation from our Judges. 10-20 writers are Shortlisted. Entry Fee: $0 USD. Words: Please submit the first 5000 words of your prose manuscript, or 15 pages of poetry. Details: Open to anyone in the world. The entry must not have been traditionally published. We are seeking all varieties of novels, short story collections, nonfiction, and poetry collections. We will accept manuscripts that are unpublished, self published, and some which are indie published. Review full entry guidelines for further details. Feedback available. Judged blind.

The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction Prizes: 2-4 Winners are announced who are published and share in the $1000 USD total prize pool. 10-20 writers Shortlisted. All entries are considered for publication, and for submission to the Pushcart. Entry Fee: $2 USD. Words: 0 – 5000 words. Details: Open to anyone in the world. We welcome most forms of Nonfiction including: Memoir, journalism, essay (including personal essay), fictocriticism, creative nonfiction, travel, nature, opinion, and many other permutations. Judges’ Feedback available. Judged blind.

Website:  https://letterreview.com/information/

creative writing about australia

This is your opportunity to write a short story using imagination, and creativity and with a wide interpretation, of any geographical concept set in Queensland.

First Place: $300 and publication in the RGSQ Bulletin and on the RGSQ website Second Place: $150 Third Place: 1 year membership to the Queensland Writers Centre Entry Fee: $10 per entry Word Length: Short fiction up to 500 words. Details: Multiple entries can be made in one or both categories (if eligible).

Website:  https://www.rgsq.org.au/event-5551067

Member Spotlight: F(r)iction ...

F(r)iction is a triannual publication that boasts work from both industry legends and emerging writers. Each issue is carefully curated to evaluate an important cultural topic from vastly different perspectives.

Short Story Word Limit: 1,001 – 7,500 words Prize: $1000 and will be considered for publication in  F(r)iction,  our triannual print collection or through our online blog  F(r)iction Log . Up to five finalists will be considered for publication too. Entry Fee: $15

Flash Fiction Word Limit: up to 1,000 words per piece Prize: $300 and will be considered for publication in  F(r)iction,  our triannual print collection or through our online blog  F(r)iction Log . Up to five finalists will be considered for publication too. Entry Fee: $10 (single), $12 (3 pack)

Poetry Word Limit: up the three pages per poem Prize: $300 and will be considered for publication in  F(r)iction,  our triannual print collection or through our online blog  F(r)iction Log . Up to five finalists will be considered for publication too. Entry Fee: $10 (single), $12 (3 pack)

Creative Nonfiction Word Limit: up to 6,500 words Prize: $500 and will be considered for publication in F(r)iction,  our triannual print collection or through our online blog  F(r)iction Log . Up to five finalists will be considered for publication too. Entry Fee: $15

Website:  https://frictionlit.org/contests/

Short stories of up to 2,000 words on an open theme.

The competition is open to all women writers within Australia and SWWV members worldwide. Prizes: 1st $300 2nd $150 3rd $75

Winning stories will be published in the Society’s anthology, Sparx. Copyright remains with the author.

Entry Fees: For SWW Victoria members: 1 story $10.00 or 3 stories $20.00 / For non-members: 1 story $15.00 or 3 stories $30.00

Website:  https://www.swwvic.org.au/competition/the-margaret-hazzard-short-story-award/

Winning Writers - best resources for poets and writers

Word Limit: 6,000 words max.

Entry Fee: $22 USD

STORY Prize: First Prize $3500 + Duotrope voucher

ESSAY Prize: First Prize: $3500 + Duotrope voucher

Website:  https://winningwriters.com/our-contests/tom-howard-john-h-reid-fiction-essay-contest

Logo

Bondi Screenplay competition invites diverse voices from all over the world to share their unique story with us. In return, we wish to focus on and celebrate where all good stories start…with the writer.

Entrants must be eighteen (18) years of age or older. Submissions must be no longer than 130 pages in length.

Grand Prize: The winner will get their script turned into a professional Audible production. Keep it to yourself as a table read or publish it to Amazon Audible & Spotify for others to enjoy. This prize is valued at $1400 USD

Best Feature Screenplay The Bondi Wave D’ore Prize Package: -The official Bondi Wave D’ore Laurels. -10 Pitches on VPF. -Your choice of any available Academy award-winning (or nominated) signed script from our shop.

Best TV Pilot: The Bondi FrothPrize Package: -The official Bondi Froth Laurels. -10 Pitches on VPF. -Your choice of any available Academy award-winning (or nominated) signed script from our shop.

Best Short Screenplay: The SUP (Stand Up Paddle Board) Prize Package: -The official Bondi SUP Laurels. -5 Pitches on VPF. -Your choice of any available Academy award-winning (or nominated) signed script from our shop – after the best TV pilot and Best Feature winners have made their selection.

All Entrants -15% off any script in the shop. Thanks to our official sponsor every entrant will receive 1 VPF pitch.

Website:  https://filmfreeway.com/BondiScreenplay

Kyogle Readers & Writers Poetry Competition 2024

Write a poem on the theme: reading Any style of poem Up to a maximum of 35 lines, not including the title

There is a $5 entry fee for each entry, you can enter up to three poems in one submission. Entry fees will be donated to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, minus processing fees.

1st prize: $250 2nd prize: $100 3rd prize: $50 Commended: 5 awards of $20

Website:  https://kraw.com.au/poetry-competition/

Hunter Writers Centre Grieve Project 2024

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The following guidelines are offered for submission (there are other visual mediums accepted): Prose: The word limit for prose submission is 500 words. Poetry: The line limit for poetry is 36 lines.

Website:  https://hunterwriterscentre.org/2024_grieve_project/

The MIKI PRIZE for Short Stories 2024

Miki was a phenomenal writer who was sadly never published in her lifetime. Her surviving brother, Paul Gallasch—with the support of her friends and the community that surrounded her—has set up this prize in her honour, to discover and foster writers like Miki, who might otherwise not be given the recognition they deserve.

Open to all South Australian residents. Free Entry. Word Count: 5000max Prize money: $2083 for the winner, and a bottle of Jameson behind the bar, with your name on it, for the runners up.

Website:  https://www.ernmalley.com.au/miki-prize

Length : Between 1,500-3,000 words

First Prize: $1,500 Second Prize: $1,000 Third Prize: $500 Keith Carroll Award $500 and a commemorative pen to the best entrant by a Boroondara resident. Highly commended: Up to 3 vouchers, $50 each

Website:  https://www.boroondara.vic.gov.au/about-council/awards/boroondara-literary-awards/enter-boroondara-literary-awards

Vine Leaves Press: The 2025 International Voices in Creative Nonfiction Competition

Vine Leaves Press

Word Limit: If the manuscript is narrative in nature (i.e. a memoir) then the length should be between 50,000 – 80,000 words. If the manuscript is experimental in nature (i.e. not straight prose, could be vignettes, poetry, or a mix), it should be at least 100 pages long.

Entry Fee: $25 per entry (multiple entries accepted)

Prizes: The winner will receive a cash prize of $1000 + Publication of the winning manuscript will occur in 2026 by Vine Leaves Press. Runners up will also be considered for publication.

Website:  https://www.vineleavespress.com/international-voices-in-cnf.html

SEPTEMBER 2024

Story Unlikely’s Magazine Submission

creative writing about australia

Website:  https://www.storyunlikely.com/#submit

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  1. Australian Writers' Centre

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    English and creative writing at UNSW School of the Arts & Media houses a passionate group of writers and scholars working in diverse fields. Our research consistently achieves high rankings. In the latest (2018) Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) assessment, we scored 5 for creative writing (well above world standard) and 4 for literary ...

  9. The Writers' Studio

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  16. Master's degrees in Creative Writing in Australia

    21,342 EUR / year. 1 year. Craft your literary and creative writing skills into a masterful talent through the Master of Arts in Writing and Literature at Deakin University. M.A. / Full-time, Part-time / Online, On Campus. Deakin University Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Ranked top 2%.

  17. Australia's 39 best Creative Writing universities [Rankings]

    Photography 31. Sculpture 25. Singing and Vocal Performance 29. UX/UI Desgin 28. Below is the list of 39 best universities for Creative Writing in Australia ranked based on their research performance: a graph of 194K citations received by 19.3K academic papers made by these universities was used to calculate ratings and create the top.

  18. Dymocks Beyond Words

    Dymocks Beyond Words is Back for 2024! Having had such a successful 2023 we are back with more categories and the biggest prize pool to date with over $20,000 in prizes to be given! So get ready to start writing! Entries open on the 1st of March and close on the 31st of May. Winners will be announced at the Awards Night on 11 October 2024 in ...

  19. Bachelor's Degrees in Creative Writing in Australia

    Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. This page shows a selection of the available Bachelors programmes in Australia. If you're interested in studying a Creative Writing degree in Australia you can view all 55 Bachelors programmes. You can also read more about Creative Writing degrees in general, or about studying in Australia.

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    Mulga Bill Writing Award 2024. Goldfields Libraries and Eaglehawk Festivals Inc. are calling for entries from writers all over Australia for the annual Mulga Bill Writing Award. Writers are encouraged to take inspiration from the theme 'mystical waters', and submit a poem (max. 25 lines) or short story (max. 2000 words).