If you’re a writer with a strong, original non-fiction voice, the Island Nonfiction Prize 2026 offers an opportunity to share your work with one of Australia’s leading literary magazines. With a $3,000 prize and publication in Island, it’s a chance to showcase creative, bold and thought-provoking non-fiction writing that engages deeply with ideas, experience and storytelling. If you’re not ready to enter this Prize and need some guidance honing your non-fiction writing skills, our Creative Non-fiction course is here to help.
Here’s the details from Island’s website:
We want to read about what fascinates, excites or enrages you. Your entry doesn’t have to be zeitgeisty – there are so many ways to be curious and about so many things. We encourage you to investigate, experiment, wax lyrical and manifest. Introduce us to new ideas, new worlds and new forms of expression.
The prize will be judged blind. This year’s judging panel will be chaired by Island‘s Nonfiction Editor, Keely Jobe, with Sam Elkin and Hayley Singer.
The winning writer will receive $3000 and their work will be published in Island 179, out in September 2026. The winner will also receive an Island subscription. All other entries will be considered for publication under our usual terms and conditions.
Eligibility
- Entry is open to Australian citizens and residents only.
- No age limit applies.
- Current Island magazine staff, interns and board members are not eligible.
Meet the judges
Keely Jobe
Keely is a writer of fiction and non-fiction living on the east coast of Lutruwita/Tasmania. Her work has been published in The Monthly, Island, Australian Geographic, Cosmos and Signals Magazine. Her debut novel, The Endling, was published by Scribe in 2026.
Hayley Singer
Hayley Singer's first book, Abandon Every Hope: Essays for the dead, was published by Upswell in 2023 and shortlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize. Her essays and reviews have been published in The Sydney Review of Books, The Monthly, The Lifted Brow, Lit Hub, Cordite Poetry Review and Art + Australia. Right now, she is writing about two women who came to live in a timber shack at the top of a cliff in coastal isolation. Not quite biography and not exactly history, this is a slippery work of outsider truths, small-town fictions and everyday omissions. Hayley is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Melbourne.
Sam Elkin
Sam Elkin is a writer, radio-maker and community lawyer. His debut book is Detachable Penis: A Queer Legal Saga, which was published in 2024 and shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Humour Writing and the National Biography Prize in 2025. He is also the co-editor of the anthology Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia. His essays have been published in Griffith Review, Australian Book Review and Sydney Review of Books and he co-hosts the 3RRR radio show Queer View Mirror.
Entries close at 5pm AEST on Monday 8 June.
To find out more and enter, head to the Island magazine’s website.
