Terms and Conditions of Entry

By entering a piece in the Newcastle Short Story Award, you agree to be bound by the following:

1. Entries close 8pm Monday 25th April AEDT
2. The word limit is 2000 maximum. This includes titles and any sub-headings. There is no minimum.
3. Poetry and plays are not eligible for entry. 
4. You do not have to be a member of Hunter Writers Centre to enter the competition. Open to all Australians living here or abroad. Entrants must be Australian citizens or permanent residents. Entrants must be aged over 18 years.
5. The judges and HWC employees and their immediate families are ineligible to enter. 
6. Your story must not include your name or any identifying marks. This means any word that the judges can link directly to you. Names of places and/or first names of people are, generally, acceptable. Be sure there are no words that identify you as the author.
7. Entry is online only. We accept .pdf or Word document (.doc) with the file name as the story title.
8. You can enter under a psuedonym. An optional field is provided on the entry form.
9. Entrants are welcome to submit more than one story. There is no limit to your number of entries. A separate entry form and separate entry fee of $16.50 (incl. GST) must accompany each entry.
10. There is no theme. You are welcome to write on any subject.
    
11. We can offer refunds up to 3 times.
12. You must acknowledge any quotes from other writers that you use.
13. By entering the Newcastle Short Story Award, the entrant warrants that:
    • they have all necessary rights to submit their entry and the material submitted has not been previously published or licensed for publication in any form in any territory;
    • their manuscript is their original creation;
    • to the best of their knowledge, their manuscript is not defamatory;
    • their manuscript does not infringe any existing copyright or licence or any other third party rights. 
14. If you have entered and you are not sure your work has been received please check
    a) that the entry fee has been deducted from your bank account and
    b) that you have received the confirmation email. This may take a few hours to arrive in your inbox, especially if you enter more than one story.
    c) Next check your junk mail. COVID-19 has resulted in increased malware and spam attacks so some email hosts are blocking emails that come from websites. As the confirmation email of your entry is generated from our secure entry system your email host may block the confirmation.
    Still not received? contact us.
15. All prizes are cash prizes except voucher awards where indicated. Vouchers are for use in store or online other than winery vouchers. Freight charges are included as part of the prize at the spending discretion of the recipient.
16. Prize winners may be required to participate in media-related events associated with the competition.
17. By supplying your contact details you agree to us sending you opt-out correspondence.
18. Once the competition closes, all submissions and payments will be crosschecked. We will only contact you if your payment was not successful or entry did not upload.
19. The finalists to be published in the anthology will be announced on this website and across our social media channels. Only authors selected to be published will be contacted directly. We do not contact entrants who are not successful.
20. Eligible entries using or referring to Aboriginal content must be in accordance with the Indigenous Peoples’ rights to their heritage (ICIP) guidelines and to the Aboriginal protocols of the region where they have been produced. If your piece includes the lived experience of minority subjectivities we may contact you to clarify this out of respect for cultural safety.
21. To administer this promotion and award the prizes, Hunter Writers Centre needs to collect personal information about authors and agents. If they do not provide the information requested, Hunter Writers Centre may not be able to provide them with entry to the Prize. 
22. By entering this Prize, the author consents to Hunter Writers Centre collecting their personal information for the purposes of administering the Newcastle Short Story Award. Hunter Writers Centre may disclose their personal information : (a) to the judges; (b) confidentially to organisations that provide services in relation to the Award; and (c) if applicable, to State and Territory Lottery departments.  
23. Hunter Writers Centre may use the author’s name, title, photograph and biography for the purpose of announcing the long list, short list, prize winners of the Award and for associated publicity purposes. 
24. The judges’ decisions are final and no correspondence will be entered into with either the judges, the staff or the board of the Hunter Writers Centre. We do not give feedback on your writing. We recommend you purchase a past anthology to read past judges’ reports and read the works selected 
25. By entering the Newcastle Short Story Award, the author gives permission to Hunter Writers Centre to publish his/her work in the anthology if selected by the judges. The copyright to the work is always retained by the author. As publisher of the anthology, Hunter Writers Centre will have First Publication Rights to all submitted works and may use any title or phrase from any entry for the purpose of promoting the competition and the anthology. Any collection or publication subsequent to the Newcastle Short Story Award that includes the author’s story should acknowledge this competition.
26. To the full extent permitted by the law, Hunter Writers Centre will not be liable for any delay, death, injury, damages, expenses, or loss whatsoever (whether direct or consequential) to persons or property as a result of any person entering into the competition or accepting or using any prize, including without limitation non-receipt of any prize or damage to any prize in transit and the Prize winner’s failure to comply with the terms and conditions (if any) specified by any third party. 
27. The judges, in their absolute discretion, may disqualify any entrant or entries if they reasonably suspect any unlawful or improper conduct, such as infringing a third party’s intellectual property rights, or if there has been a breach of these terms and conditions. HWC reserves the right, at any time, to verify the validity of entries and entrants (including the entrant’s identity, age and place of residence) and to disqualify any entrant who tampers with the entry process. Failure by HWC to enforce any of its rights at any stage does not constitute a waiver of those rights.
28. The entrant agrees to indemnify Hunter Writers Centre against any loss or damage resulting from any breach of the warranties above and acknowledge that Hunter Writers Centre may, in its absolute discretion, not award any prize to you for breach of the warranties above.