The Award that has launched the careers of over a hundred Australian authors
Offering prize money of $20,000 plus publication by Allen & Unwin with an advance against royalties
The Australian/Vogel’s Award for Young Writers is the most prestigious Australian award for an unpublished manuscript by a writer under the age of thirty-five. The winning manuscript will receive prize money of $20,000 and will be published in 2024 by Allen & Unwin with an advance against royalties. It will sit alongside some of Australia’s most successful writers, including Tim Winton, Kate Grenville, Gillian Mears, Rohan Wilson, Andrew McGahan, Belinda Castles, Kristel Thornell and Katherine Brabon.
The Australian/Vogel’s Award-winning authors have gone on to win or be shortlisted for other major awards, such as the Miles Franklin Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Booker Prize.
Entries for the 2024 Award are now open and will close on the 31st May.
How to Enter
1. Make sure you are eligible
Conditions of Entry
• Entrants must be aged under 35 years of age on 31 May 2023 (that is born after 31 May 1988).
• Entries must be lodged by 31 May 2023.
• Entrants must be Australian citizens or permanent residents.
• The manuscript submitted with the entry form should be a work of fiction, Australian history or biography.
• It must be a minimum length of 50,000 words and a maximum of 80,000 words.
• The manuscript must be an original work, entirely by the entrant and it must be written in English.
• It cannot be under consideration to any other publisher or entered into any other award.
• No more than 10% of the manuscript can have been previously published in print form, or in electronic form, on a commercial basis.
• Allen & Unwin will publish the winning entry, and will have exclusive worldwide publishing rights to it, and to any other entry they feel is of sufficient merit.
• An entry fee of $25 is applicable to each manuscript entered.
• The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
• The judges shall have the discretion to divide the prize equally between authors of entries they consider to be of equal merit. If, in their opinion, no entry is worthy of the prize, no winner shall be chosen. No entrant may win the prize in successive years.
• The winner will be told in strict confidence during September 2023, at which time the winner must agree to keep this news absolutely confidential until the simultaneous announcement and publication of the winning entry in 2024.
• Each entrant is required to agree to the above conditions of entry.
• Breach of any conditions of entry will render an entry invalid.
2. Submission process
We are currently reviewing our submissions process.
Entries for The Australian/Vogel’s Award for Young Writers open on January 28, 2023.
To download an entry form, visit the Allen & Unwin website here.