2023 Honi Soit Writing Competition – Award Presentation Event!
Wednesday, August 2nd | 6pm – 8pm
@Verge Gallery, City Road, Sydney University
Please RSVP your attendance via this RSVP form
Enjoy an evening celebrating student literary excellence at Sydney University. Competition winners will be announced with readings from winning entries and introductions from Judges, Eda Gunaydin and Diana Reid. Come along and enjoy and evening of literature, art, drinks and canapès.
Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and feel the world around you. Notice every sensation that passes through, savour all the different flavours that dance on your tongue, indulge in the visions that waltz through your mind. The chaos outside is nothing but a soft buzz compared to the tranquillity you grab onto, nestling it inside and controlling it within you and around you. What didn’t you expect? What is new? What is unfamiliar? How does this resilient moment continue to find itself burrowed within the turmoils and darkness that continues to grow and haunt our lives.
Welcome to SERENDIPITY, the 2023 Honi Soit Writing Competition, open to all University of Sydney students. Submit your entries for the chance to win in either nonfiction or fiction categories.
This year, we want to see pieces of writing that explore your interpretation of spontaneity, beauty and tranquillity, particularly in a world full of anger, hate and pain. How does resilience factor into your returning moments of serendipity? We want opinions that raise questions and give us goosebumps, and creative works that excite and disturb.
NONFICTION
Pieces can be up to 1200 words, and must be in an opinion style with a clear argument. Consider the diversity in the meanings of beauty, delight and discovery, on scales large and small, and whether we need to change course. We want you to convince, challenge and provoke us.
FICTION
Pieces can be up to 2000 words or 40 lines (depending on medium). You can write in any style, including but not limited to prose and poetry. Be imaginative with your piece – the more creative, the better. Feel free to interpret the theme as broadly as you wish, while maintaining a thematic link.
PRIZE MONEY: In each category:
First place — $1000
Second place — $500
Third place — $250
Editor’s choice — $50
SUBMISSIONS
Entries are open NOW and will close on Friday 2 June 11:59pm. To submit your piece, fill out this form: https://forms.gle/KeotzNW6CnF9aZ6E9.
Winners and top-placing entries will be published in a future edition of Honi.
ELIGIBILITY
You can submit one work per category (two pieces maximum). You must be a USyd student to enter.
JUDGES: Eda Gunaydin (non-fiction) and Diana Reid (fiction).
Eda Gunaydin is a Turkish-Australian essayist whose writing explores class, race, diaspora and Western Sydney. Her essays have appeared in The Sydney Review of Books, Meanjin, The Age, and elsewhere. She has been a finalist for a Queensland Literary Award and the Scribe Non-Fiction Prize. Her debut essay collection Root & Branch (NewSouth Publishing) was published in 2022.
Diana Reid is a Sydney-based writer. Her debut novel, Love & Virtue, was an Australian bestseller and winner of the ABIA Book of the Year Award, the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year Award, the ABA Booksellers’ Choice Fiction Book of the Year Award, and the MUD Literary Prize. Love & Virtue was also shortlisted for the Indie Debut Fiction Award, the ABIA Matt Richell New Writer Award, and Highly Commended at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Diana was also named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist in 2022. Seeing Other People is her second novel.
AWARDS NIGHT
An award presentation evening will be held in Semester 2 at Verge Gallery to present the winners of the Writing Competition. All are welcome for a night of drinks, nibbles, entertainment, and celebration! More info to come closer to date.
