Overland Prizes 2024
The Sydney Prize is an annual undergraduate writing award given out in honour of Sydney Cox, author and professor at the University of Sydney who wrote Indirections for Those Who Want to Write as well as teaching English there. Open to all students regardless of major or program of study at Sydney, its winners are recognized at an event and their work published in Overland magazine.
Winners of the Sydney Prize receive a cash award of $2500 and an original bronze seal to display on copies of their work. In addition, past winners and current ones are invited to attend a dinner together as well as special University community event taking place during spring 2024 – both events are open and free to the public.
As well as the Sydney Prize, this journal also awards several other prestigious prizes: Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize is open to writers worldwide; its 2019 theme focuses on travel-inspired fiction; while Hillman Prize for Investigative Journalism on Social Justice administered by SEIU will award winners with $5,000 cash and an original silver seal that can be displayed with copies of their work.
The Hillman Prize recognizes journalism that effectively raises awareness of social or economic injustice and brings about meaningful policy changes. Each year it is awarded by the Hillman Foundation, originally founded as Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (the predecessor union of SEIU). Alongside this award there are also three others presented by this foundation including Robert F. Kennedy Prize for Investigative Reporting and William E. Colby Award for Public Service Journalism.
Many of the Sydney Prize finalists have received recognition from other media outlets this year:
Claire Aman (B.A. ’20) won an honorable mention award for her novella titled, Who Rattles the Night?, due to its narrative and cultural interpretation of Josef Israels and domesticity in nineteenth-century Dutch art.
Submit a story by visiting the submission page – subscribers to Overland can enter at a discounted rate!
Patrick Lenton, Alice Bishop and Sara Saleh reviewed over 500 entries submitted for the 2024 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize and selected one winner and two runners-up stories to receive recognition in Overland magazine’s Autumn Issue and online respectively. The winning entry will also be published online by Overland magazine as an anthology piece.
Overland magazine would like to extend our gratitude to the Malcolm Robertson Foundation for supporting this prize, one of many ways it strives to promote progressive journalism and publish writers who may otherwise remain unheard. Subscribers support this important work; consider giving one as a present!