Announcing the winners of the Blacktown Mayoral Creative Writing Prize 2025
On Thursday, December 6th, at a ceremony at Max Webber Library, Blacktown City Libraries and WestWords were honoured the present the winning and highly commended writers and poets of the 2025 Blacktown Mayoral Writing Prize.
From Cr Brad Bunting, Mayor of Blacktown:
“It’s a milestone year for the Mayoral Creative Writing Prize. We received 762 entries for the 2025 edition – the most we have fielded in the 12 years of the competition. Clearly there are many people across Blacktown City who enjoy writing poetry and short stories and are seeking a bigger audience. This year’s theme was ‘In the Moment’, a fitting one for our times. For me, it’s a reminder of the joy of being totally consumed by what you are doing and forgetting distractions such as mobile phones. The beauty of the Mayoral Creative Writing Prize is this theme means different things to many people, as you will see. Congratulations to the winners and well done to everyone who participated. This book will be provided to local schools and made available in Blacktown City Libraries so that the poems and stories can inspire the next generation. I would like to thank our judges for reading and assessing a daunting number of entries. Not an easy task. I would also like to thank our partners WestWords and WestLit Libraries who have made the Prize such a success. Let’s keep sharing our stories and learning from each other.”
In the 12th year of the competition, we had a record response – 767 entries. For context, this is about 200 more than last year. This year, the judges had this to say:
“These stories transported us through vortices of space and time, where cross-cultural and intergenerational stories were artfully woven by Blacktown’s writers. These stories stayed with us long after the judging was done. This year’s Blacktown Mayoral Creative Writing Prize was a diverse and creative showcasing of Blacktown’s literary voices.”
We’d like to thank this year’s Blacktown Mayoral judges: Myra A. Elizabeth Blackwood, Kirsten West, Joanne Macias, Libby Hyett, Tihtina Merid, Hemat Malak, Samara Lo, Danielle Whitney, Benjamin Tiger La and Cath Stirling.
As well as each recipient recieving a cash prize, the poems and short stories from these sixteen writers will appear in this year’s Blacktown Mayoral publication In the Moment which will be available for loan from all Blacktown library branches, and is available to view online above.
On behalf of WestWords, congratulations again to all the winners and highly commended entrants, and thank you to all the writers and poets of Blacktown who shared their poems and short stories with us this year.
Blacktown City Council presents
2025
Mayoral
Creative
Writing
Prize
Welcome to the Mayoral Creative Writing Prize 2025. This prize is open to adults and children (aged 8 to 17 years) who live in Blacktown city. The poems and short stories must be works of fiction.
All entries can be either poetry or short stories. They will be judged in the following age categories:
- 8 – 11 years,
- 12 – 14 years,
- 15 – 17 years
- adult (18+)
Theme: In the Moment
Weave your ideas, experiences and imaginings based on this theme into your short story or poem.
2025 entries closed midnight, Monday 29 September, 2025.
Entries closed at midnight, Monday 29 September, 2025
Prizes
The total prize pool is $2,400. Winners aged 17 or younger will receive $200. The school they attend will receive a corresponding $100 as an incentive to encourage the budding authors of our local area. Adult winners will receive $300. All winners and highly commended writers will have their work published in 2025 Blacktown Mayoral Anthology by WestWords.
Announcement of the prize winners
The presentation ceremony took place on Thursday
6 December 2025, at 6 pm at Max Webber Library. All winners and highly commended recipients were invited to attend.
Submission criteria
1. The work must be original and completed in the last 6 months and unpublished in any other source, including school newsletters, prior to the presentation ceremony on 11 December 2025.
Entries can be either:
• poem, maximum of 25 lines
• short story, maximum of 500 words.
2. You are ineligible to enter if you have won in 2024.
3. Only one entry per person is permitted in each category.
4. Each entrant must have one entry per online form.
5. The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
6. All participants will receive a letter acknowledging the receipt of their entry and their participation. A presentation ceremony will be held on Thursday 11 December 2025, where the winners will be announced.
7. Submit entries with a completed entry form online via this link.
Judging
Your work will be judged on how original it is, how you have constructed your story or poem, the use of language, (including creative expression, grammar, sentence structure, punctuation and spelling), the way you have developed characters, atmosphere, or setting or used words in a creative way and how it relates to the theme.
An independent judging panel will assess all submissions.
The Blacktown Mayoral Writing Prize will not accept any work generated or edited by A.I. (large language models). Several layers of plagiarism tools are applied to every entry, as well the discernment of our judges. Any work discovered to be A.I. generated will be disqualified.
Short stories exceeding the 500 words limit, or poems longer than 25 lines will also be disqualified. An independent judging panel will assess all submissions.
This program is proudly supported by Blacktown City Council and WestWords.
For more information, please contact WestWords: Western Sydney’s Literature Development Organisation, on:
1800 WestWords
(1800 937 896)
or by email:
admin@westwords.com.au
