New Judge. Our judges have previously come from the publishing world, or been established poets. This year Elizabeth Morton will be judge and we are delighted to have someone at the helm who has experience of what it means to win the competition and the value of it to the career of emerging authors.

Elizabeth won first prize at NEW VOICES 2013. She has been published in both locally and internationally and had her work included in the Best Small Fictions 2016 anthology published by Queen’s Ferry Press. 2015 she was shortlisted for the Kathleen Grattan Award and has twice come 2nd place in the Sunday Star Times Short Story Competition (2015, 2016).

The competition is open only to writers considered ‘emerging’ i.e. have not published one or more books (fiction, poetry, nonfiction) with a New Zealand or overseas publisher, and is a current or former undergraduate (BA, Hons, BSc, BComm etc) or Masters student. Initially entries were invited from Auckland University then, AUT in 2013 and we are delighted to now have extended the entry to MIT and Massey’s Albany campus students and in 2018 to students of Blue Haven Writer’s Workshop.

Entries close on 1st August 2018.

The winners will be announced at the Divine Muses Evening of Poetry held on National Poetry Day, 24th August 2018.

Unity Books is again generously donating the prizes – $200 worth of book tokens for the winner and $100 worth book tokens for the runner up.

The full details are available on the attached entry form or via this link from which you can also read about previous winners.