Australian Writers' Centre blog

WIN double passes to ‘Beautiful Boy’

This week, thanks once again to our friends at Transmission Films, we have 10 double passes to new movie Beautiful Boy starring Steve Carrell and Timothée Chalamet. It opens in cinemas nationwide on 25 October 2018. Beautiful Boy is a deeply moving portrait of a family's unwavering love... read more

Valerie and Allison talk about National Novel Writing Month challenge

AWC’s Director, Valerie Khoo and AWC presenter and internationally acclaimed bestselling author, Allison Tait chatted to Myf Warhurst on ABC Radio earlier this week about the upcoming NaNoWriMo – the National Novel Writing Month challenge for the month of November. This annual global challenge started in San Francisco, USA in... read more

Our 30 favourite 30-word stories

Creative challenges are a great way to unblock your imagination and just switch gears to help focus on other tasks. So that’s why we recently decided to give you a simple enough one – to use the image above as your prompt to write a story containing no more than... read more

Q&A: Immoral vs amoral vs unmoral

Each week here at the Australian Writers’ Centre, we dissect and discuss, contort and retort, ask and gasp at the English language and all its rules, regulations and ridiculousness. It’s a celebration of language, masquerading as a passive-aggressive whinge about words and weirdness. This week we have a... read more

30-word story challenge

Completing regular creative challenges is a brilliant way to unblock your brain and get your imagination firing. In fact, it’s one of the reasons we started our Furious Fiction earlier this year. So today we thought we’d have some more fun. See that comic book image above? We... read more

Calling all unagented authors with fiction manuscripts

If you are an unagented author with a work of fiction, then this is for you. Ebury Press (an imprint of Penguin Books Limited) is open for fiction submissions. From the Ebury Press website: This open submissions period is a chance for unagented authors to get their manuscript to us... read more

COMP CLOSED: Win this AWC success pack!

This week, we’re celebrating two recently published projects by graduates of AWC, by giving away THREE sets of The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village by Joanna Nell and Hotels with Cats travel directory by Ashleigh Mills. THE SINGLE LADIES OF JACARANDA RETIREMENT VILLAGE Joanna Nell's life-affirming... read more

Ashleigh Mills launches her travel directory – ‘Hotels with Cats’

Courses taken at AWC: Blogging for Beginners Freelance Writing Stage 1 Travel Writing Profile Writing Ashleigh Mills wanted to combine her passion for cats, travel and freelance writing. So she took AWC’s courses in Blogging for Beginners, Travel Writing and Freelance Writing Stage 1. Then everything fell into place... read more

Q&A: Ba-dum tish?

Each week here at the Australian Writers’ Centre, we dissect and discuss, contort and retort, ask and gasp at the English language and all its rules, regulations and ridiculousness. It’s a celebration of language, masquerading as a passive-aggressive whinge about words and weirdness. This week we are joking... read more

COMP CLOSED: Win Liane Moriarty’s new book

This week, we’re excited to be giving away three copies of a new book by Australian author Liane Moriarty. The book is called Nine Perfect Strangers. Of course, Moriarty is no stranger to international acclaim, with her hit novel Big Little Lies being successfully adapted into one of the... read more

Two 2019 Australian Book Review competitions are now open!

The 2019 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and Calibre Essay Prize from the Australian Book Review are now open. With $16,000 worth of prizes up for grabs from these two competitions, it’s worth checking out the details below. Peter Porter Poetry Prize – $8500 The Porter Prize is one of... read more

Q&A: Casual and casualty

Each week here at the Australian Writers’ Centre, we dissect and discuss, contort and retort, ask and gasp at the English language and all its rules, regulations and ridiculousness. It’s a celebration of language, masquerading as a passive-aggressive whinge about words and weirdness. This week we are very... read more

Win $20,000 in the Penguin Literary Prize for 2018

Penguin Random House Australia is delighted to announce that the Penguin Literary Prize for 2018 is now open for submissions. From the Penguin website: "Established in 2017 in conjunction with Leading Edge Books, the Prize offers aspiring authors the opportunity to get their work into the hands of booksellers and... read more