Twenty shortlisted for Roly Sussex short story awards
Twenty writers have been shortlisted in the two divisions of the 2025 Roly Sussex Short Story Competition, run by the English-Speaking Union’s Queensland Branch.
The $10,500 competition recognises quality short story writing in two catergories – an Open Division and a Secondary School Division.
The awards attracted 123 entries in the Open Division and 78 in the School Division. They are named in honour of Emeritus Professor Roly Sussex, a leading Australian linguist widely known through his media commentary on the use of language.
They have been run and sponsored by the ESU’s Queensland Branch since 2012. The winners will be announced soon, with the winning entries to be published on the ESU website.
The shortlisted entries in the Open Division are:
Watersong – Natalie Sprite (Queensland)
The Mistress Stone – Paulette Gittins (Victoria)
Never Truly Said Goodbye – (Jennifer) Tangqing Zhang (Queensland)
The Colours of Sand – Gil Liddle (Queensland)
Douce Sirène – Jay McKenzie (New South Wales)
Head On – Chris Thompson (Victoria)
The Sideboard – Amy Montague (Victoria)
The Apology Factory – Serena Moss (Western Australia)
An Inevitable Fracture – Kit Scriven (Victoria)
Mycah – Roxena Bidgood (Queensland)
The shortlisted entries in the Secondary School Division are:
To Rot, To Renew – Valerie Yu (Brisbane, Qld)
Flies – Charlotte Serisier (Brisbane, Qld)
The Final Stitch – Emily Smith (Brisbane, Qld)
The Last Translation – Sophia Sanson-Male (Toowoomba, Qld)
The Bus Stop – U-juan Mendoza (Mossman, Qld)
The Bust of Helissia – Finley Greig-Byrne (Tamborine Mountain, Qld)
Sirens – Tara Moghbelpour (Gold Coast, Qld)
Som – Calder Higham (Toowoomba, Qld)
Shaking Off the Dust – Nicholas Taylor (Gold Coast, Qld)
Loved to Pieces – Charlotte Bright (Brisbane, Qld)
The prize money for the awards exceeds $10,000 overall – $7500 for first prize winner in the Open Division and $1500 for second place. The Secondary School Division carries prize money of $1000 for the winner and $500 for second place.
Professor Sussex said: “Words have power and never more so than when they are used to tell a story. All these stories are well worth telling and well worth reading. I commend everyone who has taken the time to put their words together for this competition but particularly those the judges have determined to be of the highest quality.”
The judges read more than 200 short stories before producing shortlists they believe to be of outstanding quality. This is credit to the authors’ creativity and diligence to craft an idea into a captivating story that both entertains and informs readers.
Chair of the two judging panels, Mr David Fagan, said all the shortlisted entries showed a depth of thought that resulted in the quality of the awards, now in their 14th year.
“The short story is a time-honoured tradition. Its beauty in the modern era is its ability to give access to good and concise writing. The Roly Sussex award also gives writers an opportunity to hone their craft and receive recognition through this form of writing.”
This year’s judges for the Open Division, chaired by author and retired newspaper editor David Fagan, are Kerry Davies (editor and publishing consultant) and Erica Fryberg (author and previous winner of this competition). The judges for the School Division, chaired by writing consultant and editor Brian Clarke, are Talisa Pariss-Proby (communication and arts educator) and Georgie Steele (freelance copy and creative writer).
The ESU’s administrator of the award and chair of the Roly Sussex Short Story Competition Subcommittee, Despina Cook, said, “Each year, this competition reminds us of the remarkable talent within our writing community. The entries we received demonstrated not only creativity but also discipline, craft and a commitment to storytelling. To be shortlisted in a field of such strong submissions is a significant achievement. It is a privilege to champion a literary form that continues to evolve and illuminate the human experience.”
Click here to view the Rolys Submission Guidelines
Click here to submit your entry for the Open Division
Click here to submit your entry for the Secondary School Division
Click here to read the 2024 winning and highly commended stories and judges’ notes
The Roly Sussex Short Story Competition celebrates and rewards the use of the English language to do its most important job – to provoke through stories that effectively and powerfully use language as their tool. The judges look for stories that thrill, entertain and then leave an aftertaste for the mind but with the discipline of brevity essential for a short story. Our panel has a variety of backgrounds and different experiences of reading, writing and publishing. We are united by the passion the competition’s namesake has for language, both its beauty and precision. The range of winners and finalists over the years shows the range of interests that will capture the judges’ attention. But they carry one common attribute – each of them is a story worth sharing, written skilfully. These stories showcase the English language at its best. David Fagan, Chair of the Judging Panel
The short story is a special genre of its own. Far from being just a cut-down version of the resonant caverns of long-form novelists like Tolstoy or Proust, in the hands of writers like Chekhov or Maupassant it has its own proper space and dimensions, its own rhythm. Its very brevity is an art form and a challenge. Each word counts, and one superfluous word can destroy the whole. Like a Schubert Lied compared to an opera, or an impromptu compared to a symphony, a short story is concentrated, sharp, focused, and all the details count. It isn’t easy to be brief and excellent. Achieving a successful short story is a wonderful act of focusing the mind on what is strictly necessary, and resolutely excluding everything that is not. Roly Sussex
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David Fagan is a former decade-long editor and editor-in-chief of The Courier-Mail. He is the author of four nonfiction books and has contributed to many others. He has been a judge of the competition for six years and chair of its judging panel the past two. |
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Emeritus Professor Roland (Roly) Sussex, OAM, FQA, Chevalier des Palmes Académiques
Roly Sussex retired from the position of Professor of Applied Language Studies at the University of Queensland in 2010. Since then he has been president of the Alliance Française (Brisbane) and the English-Speaking Union (Queensland Branch). He is involved in research into pain and communication, and intercultural communication. He fulfils a role as a public intellectual by radio broadcasting on language with the ABC in Queensland (since 1997) and South Australia (since 2000), and a wide-ranging program of public speaking to professional and community groups.
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