Roly Sussex Short Story Competition – Winning Entries 2024
Judging of the Roly Sussex Short Story Competition – affectionately now known as the Rolys – is now finalised. The competition, one of the flagships of the English-Speaking Union (Queensland Branch), attracted a record number of entries – 73 in the Open Division, 70 in the Secondary School Division – and demonstrated an exceptionally high standard.
Congratulations to all the authors who have created work they are proud of and that we have enjoyed.
Rolys Open Division 2024 Winners
The quality of this year’s entries testifies that short fiction is alive and thriving and, in the name of Roly Sussex, well supported by the English-Speaking Union. We looked for creativity, effective and evocative use of language and, importantly for a short story, a powerful ending that brought it together. The judges all have editing and publishing backgrounds, so we also looked for publishable work that is engaging to a general audience.
For the first time in the competition, the judges have awarded an equal first to two stories in the Open Division, as “mature, poised examples of their craft, though very different”, to quote Roly Sussex.
Equal First Prize
Roxeena Bidgood, Music Played in a Café
Paulette Gittins, Blue Is the Limit
Highly Commended
Rachel Bowman, Help for Kitty Hopkins’ Nerves
Daniel Fallon, Howl
Rolys Secondary School Division 2024 Winners
Among the 70 entries this year was an extraordinary exploration of creativity, genre and insight into humanity from a young writing base. We particularly recognise the time, effort and command of language that went into each and every one.
We looked for standalone, publishable pieces, with excellent use of narrative structure or understanding of the short story format, and a thought-provoking or challenging concept to explore as readers.
Here are the winning stories in the Secondary School Division:
First Prize: Isaac Round from Groves Christian College, An Angel
Second Prize: Lori Adam from Downlands College, Frontlines of War
Highly Commended: Isabella Van Heerden from Southport Secondary Independent School, A Thousand Yards
Highly Commended: Jiaying Luo from Queensland Academy for Science Mathematics and Technology, Ouroboros
These stories will soon be published on our website.
Details of the 2025 Roly Sussex Short Story Competition available early next year.
The Roly Sussex Short Story Competition celebrates and rewards the use of the English language to do its most important job – to provoke through stories that effectively and powerfully use language as their tool. The judges look for stories that thrill, entertain and then leave an aftertaste for the mind but with the discipline of brevity essential for a short story. Our panel has a variety of backgrounds and different experiences of reading, writing and publishing. We are united by the passion the competition’s namesake has for language, both its beauty and precision. The range of winners and finalists over the years shows the range of interests that will capture the judges’ attention. But they carry one common attribute – each of them is a story worth sharing, written skilfully. These stories showcase the English language at its best.
David Fagan, Chair of the Judging Panel
The short story is a special genre of its own. Far from being just a cut-down version of the resonant caverns of long-form novelists like Tolstoy or Proust, in the hands of writers like Chekhov or Maupassant it has its own proper space and dimensions, its own rhythm. Its very brevity is an art form and a challenge. Each word counts, and one superfluous word can destroy the whole. Like a Schubert Lied compared to an opera, or an impromptu compared to a symphony, a short story is concentrated, sharp, focused, and all the details count. It isn’t easy to be brief and excellent. Achieving a successful short story is a wonderful act of focusing the mind on what is strictly necessary, and resolutely excluding everything that is not.
Roly Sussex
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David Fagan is a former decade-long editor and editor-in-chief of The Courier-Mail. He is the author of four nonfiction books and has contributed to many others. He has been a judge of the competition for six years and chair of its judging panel the past two. |
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Emeritus Professor Roland (Roly) Sussex, OAM, FQA, Chevalier des Palmes Académiques
Roly Sussex retired from the position of Professor of Applied Language Studies at the University of Queensland in 2010. Since then he has been president of the Alliance Française (Brisbane) and the English-Speaking Union (Queensland Branch). He is involved in research into pain and communication, and intercultural communication. He fulfils a role as a public intellectual by radio broadcasting on language with the ABC in Queensland (since 1997) and South Australia (since 2000), and a wide-ranging program of public speaking to professional and community groups. |