Bornean-Australian author, artist, rapper and poet Omar Musa takes top two prizes in the 2024 Newcastle Short Story Award, announced on Sunday 6 April.
Omar Musa, a Bornean-Australian author, visual artist, rapper and poet from Queanbeyan, NSW, has won first and second prize in the 2024 Newcastle Short Story Award. Melbourne-based author Lisa Lang took third prize in the respected annual competition. Both winners were announced at the Award’s anthology launch event held on Sunday 6 April at FogHorn Brewery, Newcastle during the Newcastle Writers Festival.
‘We are thrilled to announce these two brilliant writers as the 2024 prize winners,’ said Katherine McLean, Hunter Writers’ Centre Director. ‘The calibre and diversity of their writing, and that of the short-listed entries, highlights the best in Australian short story. We are proud to support these writers taking the artform to new heights.’
Established in 2012, the Newcastle Short Story Award and its accompanying anthology are programs of the Hunter Writers’ Centre, a not-for-profit serving the stories, storytellers and writers of the Hunter region since 1998.
The Award offers a first prize of $3,000, second prize of $1,500, and third prize of $500, generously sponsored by the University of Newcastle. A highly commended award of $200 is supported by FogHorn Brewery, Hunter Writers’ Centre offers a members’ prize of $500, and local winery Peppertree Wines sponsors the Local Award.
Newcastle Short Story Award Anthology
Over 560 entries were submitted for the 2024 Award, with 34 entries shortlisted by judges Pitaya Chin and Catherine McNamara.
The 2024 Newcastle Short Story Award Anthology includes all winning and shortlisted entries and is now available for purchase online at hunterwriterscentre.org and at the Hunter Writers’ Centre’s Lighthouse Arts Store, open 10 am – 4 pm Saturday and Sundays at Whibayganba-Nobbys Headland, Newcastle.
‘Reading the many entries for this competition was a joy, and the great quantity of submissions is testimony to a collective love of the form,’ said McNamara and Chin in a statement published in the anthology. “The stories we selected for the anthology are those that transported us somewhere … and performed the age-old trick of making us better see ourselves, or question ourselves, or regard others with an enlightened eye.’
'I'm over the moon to have won.'
Musa’s and Lang’s work ‘stood out from the start and should be celebrated as vivid and admirable examples of the form,’ said the judges.
Omar Musa has released four poetry books, four hip hop records and the novel ‘Here Come the Dogs,’ long-listed for the Miles Franklin Award and International Dublin Literary Award. In the 2024 Newcastle Short Story Award, he won first prize for his story ‘Langsat,’ a fictional story based on his real-life experience after a kickboxing fight in Malaysia, and second prize for ‘Boogeyman,’ about a book theft that leads to an unlikely friendship.
‘I’m over the moon to have won two prizes in the Newcastle Short Story Award, and that my writing has resonated with the judges,’ said Musa. ‘I hope it also resonates with readers. Langsat is definitely fiction, but it’s closely based on a scary experience that actually happened to me after my first (and last) fight, in Kota Kinabalu. It got me thinking deeply about issues that have been preoccupying me for the past few years: statelessness in Sabah, entrenched inequality and injustice, migration, violence, chance, and at times insurmountable gaps in understanding. I suppose I wanted the reader to experience a form of vertigo, just like the characters do, as they stare down into a dark, swirling vortex.’
Musa’s new novel ‘Fierceland’ will be released by Penguin in September 2025, and launched locally with the Hunter Writers’ Centre in October.
Lisa Lang, who won third prize for her story ‘Body Memory,’ is the award-winning author from Melboure, whose novel, ‘Utopian Man’, was the co-winner of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 2009.
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