Mulga Bill Writing Award
Entries are now closed for the 2026 Mulga Bill Writing Award, and winners have been selected!
Thank you, and congratulations to everyone who submitted work to this year’s Mulga Bill Writing Award.
Competitions like this matter because they champion Australian writers, amplify local and national voices, and remind us that our stories are worth telling.
Our judges, Cecile Shanahan, a local editor, and Amanda Collins, local poet and author, had a very difficult task selecting from almost 180 entries.
They were deeply impressed by the quality, thoughtfulness and craft of the work submitted.
And the 2026 Mulga Bill Award winners are:
Short Story First Place
Borderlines, Matthew Southwell
Judge Cecile Shanahan’s comments:
‘Borderlines’ pushes its reader headfirst into a finely crafted narrative where the harshness of Australian summers, rivalries between neighbours and the pains of regret are all laid bare. This is a well-paced and tightly structured short story that leads to a clever, if devastating, conclusion. I raise a glass of the finest vintage to the author.
Short Story Second Place
Harvest, Larissa Patton
Judge Cecile Shanahan’s comments:
With a heartbreaking twist on this year’s theme, ‘Harvest’ draws you in and holds you there. The raw and authentic voices of the characters and the gravity of the situations they find themselves in are handled with deft care. A compassionate rendering of a life-altering decision.
Short Story Highly Commended
What Grows Here, Timothy Rickwood
Judge Cecile Shanahan’s comments:
A gentle yet familiar story, ‘What Grows Here’ shines a light on the assorted ways humans and plants alike can be nurtured to grow and blossom. A small taste of cherry tomatoes as a final symbol of change and hope really speaks to readers.
Poetry First Place
a geriatric mother they wrote on my chart, Athena Law
Judge Amanda Collins’ comments:
This piece is unapologetically brutal – from the meticulous choice of language (and topic) to the almost punctuation-free layout. The harvest is unquestionably the foundation event being described and there is nothing romantic or soft about it – no golden autumn hues or gentle phrasing. The shape is so compressed that the reading of it adds to the reader’s anxiety.
We arrive at this poem wondering about the title – a geriatric mother? The poet does a very efficient job of filling us in, so that by the end we have been through that harrowing (but ultimately hopeful) event with her.
I suspect that this work will challenge many readers.
Good!
If this were a poetry competition for the most beautiful poem, this piece would not have a place – but as a description of a real and human harvest, this piece is extraordinary and deserves to be celebrated.
Read a geriatric mother they wrote on my chart.
Poetry Second Place
Zinnias, Laura Tennyson
Judge Amanda Collins’ comments:
What a gloriously domestic poem. It reminds me a little of the piece by David Campbell, ‘On the Birth of a Son’. The contrasts between drought, and the zinnias watered with greywater, and the lack of harvest with the arrival of a child, remind me to be thankful for blessings large and small.
The use of enjambment creates space for contemplation. There’s a moment of homeliness so tangible I can almost see the earth cracking in the drought. The simile ‘like Dollar 5s on a chocolate cake’, the twin-tub and even the zinnias are so down-to-earth and of a particular era that it sets the poem quite firmly in a time and place, but at the same time evoke the big Life questions. That final stanza – oof! Such a perfect contrast. Congratulations, poet. In 25 lines you have created something truly lovely.
Poetry Highly Commended
Exploding Gum, Katherint Heneghan
Judge Amanda Collins’ comments:
This poem is so delicately crafted, it moves from image to image like the bees described therein. You can almost hear the scene depicted here. Our harvesters – the bees – are as transient as the poem itself – beautifully here and then gone again.
A note from Poetry Prize judge Amanda Collins:
Thank you so much, poets, for sharing your fine works. This collection of poems took some reading – like an enormous box of chocolates, I had to stop and appreciate each piece. Your treatments of the theme varied widely, which made for very interesting reading, too.
As a practising poet, I appreciate the work, thought and craft that goes into each of these pieces, and I’m grateful to the brave poets who submit their entries to the Mulga Bill Writing Award. In an era where computers can be instructed to regurgitate any amount of drivel, these personal, human pieces that I encountered here were pure soul refreshment.
I was delighted to see some rhyming verse in amongst the entries and hope one day to again see a perfect villanelle, sonnet or bush ballad among the winning few. But there can only be a few, and the winning pieces were engaging, confronting and well- crafted. Congratulations to you all, and thank you for trusting me with your works.
About the Judges
Amanda Collins, Poetry Prize Judge
Amanda Collins is a poet, songwriter and poetry teacher, and a fierce advocate for original poetry in Central Victoria. She teaches across schools and libraries with partner poet, Dave Munro, and has hosted Open Mics and Spoken Words since pre-pandemic times.
Cecile Shanahan, Short Story Prize Judge
Cecile Shanahan is an experienced editor, writing awards judge and respected literary conversations moderator. Cecile has worked as a judge for the Mulga Bill Awards, Davitt Awards, Aurealis Awards and the RPCV Rural and Regional Journalism and Photography Awards. She was involved with organising Bendigo Writers Festival for a decade, including three years as a curator. Cecile is also a past board director of the CBCA and currently sits on the IPEd Editors Victoria committee.
Read past entries
