Writing Prizes

The Adas

Each year the Williamstown Literary Festival is delighted to convene the Ada Cambridge Biographical Prose Prize, Poetry Prize and The Young Adas which are named after one of Australia’s finest colonial writers, Ada Cambridge.

Entries are now open for the 2025 competition. Find out more now!

The Jennifer Burbidge Short Story Award

The Jennifer Burbidge Short Story Award was established in 2001 by Mary and Andrew Burbidge to honour the life of their eldest daughter, Jennifer, who died aged 21. The prize is funded by royalties from Mary Burbidge’s memoir Forever Baby, published by HarperCollins in 1999, and welcomes short stories of fiction or non-fiction of up to 3000 words on the theme of disability.

Entries are now open for the 2025 competition. Find out more now!

The Adas Anthology for 2024 is available to purchase from Book & Paper in Williamstown.

You can view the 2023 Judges Report here.

The People’s Choice Awards

The first Willy Lit Fest started with it, and it has become a much-loved feature of the festival.

You can opt for the prose or poetry sections – there is a prize of wine for each, as well as runners-up prizes. Whether your reading style is hyper-active or cool and reflective (or somewhere in between), and whether or not you’ve read in public before, we’d love to hear from you.

View details.