Stringybark Open Short Story Award 2024
CLOSED
The Stringybark Flash Fiction Award
2011
THIRD PRIZE
The Cleaner
by
David Campbell
SECOND PRIZE
Mal’s Coming for a Visit
by
Rebecca Raisin
Late
by
Linda Wyrill
FIRST PRIZE
Between Heaven and Hell
by
Annette Johnson
Bikinis undulated, underwater pennants marking high points in Lachie’s life. Pink crocheted triangles, stiff with salt water, unknotted with fumbling fingers his first time. Sporty Lycra, cupping surf carnival competitors’ taut buttocks. Sequinned strings, slinking from the glittering loins of tired-eyed strippers at his brother’s buck’s night. Today, his girlfriend Em wore a shimmering cobalt bikini, the colour of the flash on a kookaburra’s wing
(from Free-Diving by Morgana MacLeod).
Writers from all over Australian have contributed to this delightful anthology of thirty-eight flashfiction stories. Each story is complete in 1000 words or fewer. Written by established and first-time writers, these stories are the best of the entries in the Stringybark Flash Fiction Awards. Selected by David Vernon, Nadine Smith, Sarah Whitehead and Rick Williams.
HIGHLY COMMENDED
A Life Worth Living — Z.S. Nojin • Free-Diving — Morgana MacLeod • The Oonjimalla Hotel — Kylie Mulcahy • Not Everybody’s Beautiful — Naomi Reed • The City — Parrett Favell • Pay it On — Anne Dwyer • A Tidy Sum — Kerry Lown Whalen • The Good Old Days — James Kent • You Can Fix Her Up Now — Kerry Taylor • Last Tango in Bassendean — Joanna Capelle • Blue Willow — Gayle Beveridge • Flash Harry — Kerry Lown Whalen • Kings Cross Roads — Morgana MacLeod • The Black Hole — Pamela Tatt • A Matter of Choice — Coral Sturgess • The Gift of a Granddaughter — Vickie Walker • The Nest Egg — Francis Cloake • Home-coming — Kerry Taylor • Safe at a Distance — Kurt Ulmer • Carry You — Katrina Sugars • Living Alone — Meg Main • Red Wednesday — Frank Leggett • Nutmeg Custard — Jeanette Fegan • The Boon — Thérèse Murphy • Not a Romance — Thea Biesheuvel • The Windmill Trilogy — Vickie Walker • The Haunting of Collie Street — Helen Meikle • Solitary Man — April Edwards • Obligations — Carmel Lillis • The Shed — Kate Loveday • The Duke of York and the Municipal Arch (1901) — Adam Tucker • Out of the Blue — Joanne Capelle • Connection — Beverley Lello • The Piano’s Song — Elissa Turner
Competition Closed: 31st March 2011
159 entries. $515 in prizes.
Judges: Nadine Smith, Sarah Whitehead, Rick Williams and David Vernon
Editor: David Vernon
Proof-reader: Barbara Vernon
Cover designer: David Vernon
Cover photo: Whitney Merritt
Australian printer: Digital Print Australia (Adelaide)
28 published stories. One printed anthology, and one e-book.
Edited by David Vernon, 122pp, paperback
Stringybark Publishing ISBN: 9780987092229
$5 AUD for E-book
Purchase E-book ($3.95 AUD)
