Our Origin Story

The competition is named for long-time English-Speaking Union (Qld) member and its immediate past president, Professor Roly Sussex. Roly is an Emeritus Professor of Applied Language Studies at The University of Queensland and a leading champion of language and languages in Australia. His ABC Radio program “A Word in Your Ear” has been running since 1997. This prized literary award was launched in 2012. It fosters original creative writing of outstanding quality, including experimental, challenging or thought-provoking work.

Prize Categories:

Open Division

First Prize: $7500

Second Prize: $1500

Secondary School Division

First Prize: $1000

Second Prize: $500

Entries are now open

Entries close 5pm AEST

18 September 2026

No submissions will be accepted after this date.

Eligibility

Authors must be Australian citizens or Australian residents who are not related to the judges or members of the Board of the English-Speaking Union (Queensland).

Entrants to the Open Division may submit one story only.

Entrants to the Secondary School Division must be enrolled full time at an Australian secondary school. Secondary School entrants may submit a different story to the Open Division if they wish.

Submitted stories should not have been published before.

Please see the Submission Guidelines for further information.

Results

The results will be announced by December 2026 through the website of the ESU: https://www.esu.org.au/

The release of the results will be notified to entrants by email.

Judging panels

Email ESU (Qld) with any queries:
rolysussexstory@esu.org.au

For further information and registration, go to:
https://english-speakingunionqueenslandbranch.submittable.com/submit

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

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 since 2014 and chair of its judging panel since 2022.

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.