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Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2022

winner y separately published work icon Here Be Leviathans Chris Flynn , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2022 24685514 2022 selected work short story

'A grizzly bear goes on the run after eating a teenager. A hotel room participates in an unlikely conception. A genetically altered platypus colony puts on an art show. A sabretooth tiger falls for the new addition to his theme park. An airline seat laments its last useful day. A Shakespearean monkey test pilot launches into space.

'The stories in Here Be Leviathans take us from the storm drains under Las Vegas to the Alaskan wilderness; the rainforests of Queensland to the Chilean coastline. Narrated in Chris Flynn’s unique and hilarious style by animals, places, objects and even the (very) odd human, these short fictions push the boundaries of the form by examining human behaviour from the perspective of the outsider.'  (Publication summary)

Year: 2021

winner y separately published work icon The Gulp Alan Baxter , Australia : 13th Dragon Books , 2021 21074066 2021 selected work novella horror

'Strange things happen in The Gulp. The residents have grown used to it.

'The isolated Australian harbour town of Gulpepper is not like other places. Some maps don’t even show it. And only outsiders use the full name. Everyone who lives there calls it The Gulp. The place has a habit of swallowing people.

'A truck driver thinks the stories about The Gulp are made up to scare him. Until he gets there.

'Teenage siblings try to cover up the death of their mother, but their plans go drastically awry.

'A rock band invite four backpackers to a party at their house, where things get dangerously out of hand.

'A young man loses a drug shipment and his boss gives him 48 hours to make good on his mistake.

'Under the blinking eye of the old lighthouse, a rock fisher makes the strangest catch of his life.

'Five novellas. Five descents into darkness.

'Welcome to The Gulp, where nothing is as it seems.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2020

winner y separately published work icon The Heart is a Mirror for Sinners & Other Stories Angela Slatter , Harrogate : PS Publishing , 2020 18687707 2020 selected work short story

'Welcome to The Heart is a Mirror for Sinners and Other Stories.

'Slatter’s work has been described by the legendary Ramsey Campbell as “enviably original, and told in prose as stylish as it’s precise. Not just disturbing but often touching, her work enriches and revives the tale of terror.”

'From the fierce changeling children of ‘Finnegan’s Field’ to shades of old gods in ‘Egyptian Revival’, from the Lovecraftian echoes of ‘Lavinia’s Wood’ to a new kind of Victorian sleuth in ‘Ripper’, and from the re-imagined fairy tale of ‘The Little Mermaid, in Passing’ to the tender terror of ‘Neither Time nor Tears’, the stories in this collection spring from dragons’ teeth scattered on the field of story.

'The Heart is a Mirror for Sinners and Other Stories collects twelve reprints and two new unpublished tales, with an Introduction by Kim Newman.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2019

winner y separately published work icon Collision : Stories J. S. Breukelaar , Atlanta : Meerkat Press , 2019 15647027 2019 selected work short story

'A collection of twelve of J.S. Breukelaar's darkest, finest stories with four new works, including the uncanny new novella "Ripples on a Blank Shore." Introduction by award-winning author, Angela Slatter. Relish the Gothic strangeness of "Union Falls," the alien horror of "Rogues Bay 3013," the heartbreaking dystopia of "Glow," the weird mythos of "Ava Rune," and others.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2018

winner y separately published work icon Tales from the Inner City Shaun Tan , Shaun Tan (illustrator), Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2018 14152497 2018 selected work single work short story poetry prose art work

'Where can we live if not in each other's shadow? World-renowned artist Shaun Tan applies his unique imagination to a reflection on the nature of humans and animals, and our urban coexistence. From crocodile to frog, tiger to bee, this is a dark and surreal exploration of the perennial love and destruction we feel and inflict—of how animals can save us, and how our lives are forever entwined, for better or for worse. Tales from the Inner City is a masterful work, bearing all of Shaun Tan's trademark wit and poignancy in both its prose and exquisite illustrations.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

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