Members Writing Competition

Autumn 2025 - Competition Winners

Thank you to everyone who entered the Autumn 2025 Writing Competition.

Congratulations to Kathryn Fry, Luciana Croci, and Katarina Lindstrom, whose winning entries are featured below.

Highly commended entries: Paris Rosemont and Geoffrey Nash.

Kathryn Fry, 'Weathered'

1st Prize — $100
After Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

Weathered

I have no need to re-live
that moment our youngest left home, whistling
with his three black plastic bags of belongings and X Box.

Or to recall the fractious students sent
from their classes for me to reframe the lessons
and their learning.

Nor the positives of family life lost in the melee
of teen-speak head-scrums.

But my old diary entry traces that weathered seat
where I watched the wash of white at the edge
of the Pacific.

On my right the curve of beach to the island
of bleached shells and uncovered stories. On my left, lines
of rock, trees, cliff. A boat out far
two silver gulls in close, sun on my skin.

Luciana Croci, 'Ambiguous'

2nd Prize — $75
After J Debenham, Storms and Shadows

loose kanji script

ancient calligraphy of grace and balance

start with a bold line drawn by a hand

steady in meditation

ink flows smooth, frays a little as the brush lifts

then lines bear down

not as dark not touching

but counterpointing the beam above

enclosing a space

perhaps a wide barred cage

shivers of Louise Bourget’s Spider

and the straddle of its legs

she called her sculpture mother

ominous jarring

storms’ damage concealed by shadows

eases into memory’s hide and seek

fades in the comfort of a mother’s love

a soft smothering you’d hardly notice

until you’ve grown

and know there’s another way.

Guidelines

Entries close Friday 2 May 2025, 5 pm.
Submit your entries via the form below
The contest is for members only. Become a member
Maximum word count: 500 words (poems max 20 lines)
Max 2 submissions per member
Winners announced late May

Prizes

First Prize: $100

Second Prize: $75

Third Prize: $50

Winning entries will be published on the Hunter Writers’ Centre website.

Writing Prompts

Write a piece inspired by one of the quotes or images below

… in many old paintings, one could discover what was called a pentimento, an earlier layer of something that the artist had chosen to paint over. Sometimes, these were as small as an object, or a color that had been changed, but other times, they could be as significant as a whole figure, an animal, or a piece of furniture. I said that in this way too, writing was just like a painting. It was the only way that one could go back and change the past, to make things not as they were, but as we wished they had been, or rather as we saw it.
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

The earth, from here, is like heaven. It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour. When we’re on that planet we look up and think heaven is elsewhere, but here is what the astronauts and cosmonauts sometimes think: maybe all of us born to it have already died and are in an afterlife. If we must go to an improbable, hard-to-believe-in place when we die, that glassy, distant orb with its beautiful lonely light shows could well be it.
― Samantha Harvey, Orbital

Dad used to say Aussie birds reminded him
of fish in the reef near his village,
Free, multicoloured, dreamlike.
― Omar Musa, Here Come The Dogs

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

I get changed into my scrubs, relieved for the focus on other women’s bodies, making sure they feel safe, strong and worthy of respect. I know exactly the sort of midwife I want to be: the sort that I need.
― Oceane Campbell, Labour of Love

I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

All images from the Lighthouse Arts Exhibition, Coastal Impressions, by the artists of Newcastle Printmakers Workshop.

Thank you for your submission!