The 2026 Living Stories Western Sydney Writing Prize: Is it true … ?
WestWords and WestLit Libraries are proud to present
The 2026 Living Stories Western Sydney Writing Prize.
This year, we are asking writers and poets to respond to the theme …
Is it true … ?
Living Stories 2026 – Overall Winners Ceremony
Friday 17th July, WestWords were proud to announce and celebrate the overall winners and highly commended writers of the 2026 Living Stories Writing Prize and officially launch this year’s publication IS IT TRUE …? at Old Government House, in association with The National Trust.
Special Guest Alan Mascarenhas, on behalf of the WestWords Board, welcomed everyone to the celebration and the overall winners’ awards ceremony. In attendance was Member for Parramatta Ms. Donna Davis MP, who officially launched the 2026 Living Stories anthology: IS IT TRUE …? and also performed a live reading of the Overall 10-12 winners’ poem, If, written by Olive Van Riel. General Manager of Properties, Nick Corbett, spoke on behalf of The National Trust. And we also heard from debut novelist Munira Tabassum Ahmed, who told the crowd her journey from winning the 16-18 overall age category in the inaugural 2021 Living Stories Writing Prize, to attending the WestWordsxVaruna Residency in 2023, to recieving a fellowship through the WestWords Accelerator in 2024, to just this month, having her debut novel, The Clinging Thing, be published by Penguin Random House.
Special guests, Gregory Coustas, on behalf of WestLit Libraries, and also as a judge of this year’s competition, presented the ages 10-12 awards, Raghida Younes from Arab Bank Australia presented the Ages 13-15 awards, Dr. Leila Iranmanesh from Australian Catholic University presented the 16-18 awards, and Pete Shmigel, overall adult winner for the inaugural 2021 Living Stories Writing Prize, presented the adult awards. Pete Shmigel was one of the judges for this year’s awards, and has also published his collection of short stories, The Drone, with WestWords Books in 2025. At the ceremony, he read the short story that won the inaugural Living Stories Writing Prize.
Congratulations to the following overall award-winners:
Ages 10-12 Overall Highly Commended
Lena Dao | Echoes of Vanilla
From Fairfield City
Ages 10-12 Overall Winner
Olive Van Riel | If
From The Hills Shire
Ages 13-15 Overall Highly Commended
Amol Manandhar | My Mum Never Lied
From Penrith City
Ages 13-15 Overall Winner
Aleira Commisso | Dear Diary,
From Wollondilly Shire
Ages 16-18 Overall Highly Commended
Ripley Coble | Little One
From Wingecarribee Shire
Ages 16-18 Overall Winner
Diya Maninathan | Skin and Bone
From The Hills Shire
Adult Overall Highly Commended
Orana Loren | The Disciple
From the City of Parramatta
Adult Overall Winner
Christina Zabolotny | a bowl of ice and cherries
From Blacktown City
This year’s overall adult winner has won $750, in addition to their $100 prize winning as LGA winner. Our adult highly commended writer has won $250 plus their LGA $100 prize winnings. The overall junior winners have won $300, in addition to $75 LGA winnings, and the overal highly commended junior winners have walked away with $200 plus their $75.
Living Stories, and the winning prize pool, is made possible thanks to the generous support of our 2026 partners: WestLit Libraries, Create NSW, Foundation, Arab Bank Australia, and Australian Catholic University.
Click through the slide show to see all photos from the Friday Ceremony:
Then on Saturday 18th July, WestWords returned to Old Government House to welcome over 350+ people to celebrate every LGA winner and highly commended writer who is featured in the publication, and hear them perform their work.
Winners and Highly Commended Writers also gathered to signed the ‘office copy’ of the publication. It was our pleasure to showcase these talented emerging creative writers from all across Western Sydney.
Click through the slide show to see all photos from the Saturday Showcase:
This year’s online publication: Living Stories: IS IT TRUE …?
You can now read this year’s anthology: LIVING STORIES IS IT TRUE … ? here online. In this year’s anthology, find all the short stories and poems from the 2026 LGA winners and highly commended writers, from all age groups, as each writer wrestles with, and answers the question, is it true…?
We are pleased to announce the 2026 Living Stories IS IT TRUE … ? LGA results!
Please find the highly commended and winning entrants featured in the carousels below.
Please find the highly commended and winning entrants from each LGA featured on the tiles below. These featured writers will receive a cash prize, as well as see their entry featured in the 2026 Living Stories anthology publication.
All highly commended and winning entrants will be contacted directly via email.
On behalf of all of us here at WestWords, and the 2026 judging team, congratulations!
Living Stories 2026 – LGA Highly Commended Results
Living Stories 2026 – LGA Winner Results
The LGA winning entries now go on to compete for overall winner of Living Stories 2026, to be announced Friday 17th July at the awards ceremony and publication launch. LGA winners will receive further notification via email.
Living Stories 2026 – Showcase event
Join us in celebrating the winning and highly commended writers of our award-winning program: The Living Stories Western Sydney Writing Prize – Is It Ture … ?
Saturday July 18th, 2026 is a unique opportunity to celebrate our new partnership with The National Trust, and be welcomed at our new event venue: Old Government House in Parramatta Park.
We invite all winning and highly commended writers to celebrate and showcase their work in front of a crowd, and to come collect their copy of the publication. Find out more, and RSVP to the event, via this link.
Living Stories 2026 – The Competition
The Living Stories Western Sydney Writing Prize is a creative writing competition for residents of Western Sydney, and Wingecarribee Shire, which is home to over 2.5 million Australians originating from 180 countries, speaking almost 100 different languages, and residing in 14 local government areas. Living Stories is a WestWords, WestLit Libraries initiative. This project is proudly supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
Living Stories 2026 is now closed.
Thank you for participating in Living Stories, 2026.
There are two rounds of judging. In round one, your poem, story or personal essay will be judged by panels drawn from your local community. Winners and highly commended entries will be selected from each age group. These results will be announced online in June, 2026.
The four winners, and four highly commended entrants, from each competing LGA will have their short story/poem published in the 2026 Living Stories Anthology: Is it true … ?
The four winners, and four highly commended entrants, from each competing LGA will receive a cash prize.
In the second round, the winners from each LGA will go to the next round of judging to vie for the overall prize. These results will be announced in person at the Living Stories ceremony and book launch in July 2026. The overall winners and highly commendeds will receive an additional cash prize.
Living Stories is your opportunity to share your story.
If you are aged 10 years or older, and live in 1 of the 14 competing Western Sydney LGAs, we want your piece of writing responding to the theme:
Competition Dates
Competition Opens: 13 March, 2026.
Competition closes: 27 April, midnight, 2026
Announcement of LGA winners: Early June – via online announcement (WestWords social media and newsletter). LGA winners and highly commended entrants will also be notified via email.
Announcement of Overall Winners and book launch: July 17, 2026. Venue TBA. This is an RSVP’d event.
The Living Stories Western Sydney Writing Prize returns for its 6th year in 2026. Living Stories is a creative writing competition for residents of Western Sydney and Wingecarribee Shire, offering an opportunity at publication and cash prizes from a pool of over $10,000.
Entries can either be:
– a fiction short story (max 500 words)
– narrative non-fiction story (max 500 words)
– personal essay (max 500 words)
– or a poem (up to 25 lines)
Living Stories 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.
The writing prize age categories are as follows:
10 – 12 years;
13 – 15 years;
16 – 18 years;
and adults (18+).
Terms and Conditions
To read the full terms and conditions please visit here.
- Entry is free.
- All entries MUST be submitted digitally via our online form.
- To be eligible, entrants must reside within one of the following local government areas:
- Blacktown City
- Blue Mountains City
- Camden Council
- Campbelltown City
- Cumberland City Council
- Fairfield City
- The city of Canterbury-Bankstown
- Hawkesbury City
- Liverpool City
- The city of Parramatta
- Penrith City
- The Hills Shire
- Wingecarribee Shire
- Wollondilly Shire
- Entries must be written primarily in English, and may be in the form of a short story, poem or essay, and must not exceed 500 words in length.
- Entries will be judged on:
- Originality and creativity
- Construction and use of language
- Engagement with the theme
- Entries must creatively engage with the theme: Is it true …?
- We encourage participants not to name their work ‘Is it true …?’. This is the theme of the work, not the title. Participants will be judged on their ability to engage with the theme in a creative and original way.
- Work must be original, unpublished and solely authored by the applicant.
- Entrants must not use A.I. generative tools (large language models) to generate or edit any part of the entry. Any works found to have been generated by A.I. tools will be disqualified.
- Authors maintain creative, copy and moral rights to their work, but grant WestWords permission to publish the work in the 2026 Living Stories: Is it true …? Anthology if they are an LGA winner or highly commended entrant.
- All LGA winners and highly commended entrants will receive (1) free copy of the 2026 Living Stories: Is it true …? Anthology.
Below:
Last year’s overall award ceremony and book launch, held on Friday 18th July 2025 at PHIVE in Parramatta. Find out more information about last year’s competition here.
Congratulations to the overall winners and highly commended writers and poets of Living Stories: Only I Can Say 2025.
Living Stories 2026
There are two parts to Living Stories:
- The Short Story and Poetry Writing Prize
- The free creative writing workshops hosted in libraries across Western Sydney, in partnership with WestLit Libraries
Scroll below to find more information on both the competition and the workshops!
Living Stories 2026 – The Workshops
In conjunction with the prize, WestWords will run free writing workshops across Western Sydney’s libraries during the April school holidays, 2026, presented by local professional authors.
Attend a free 90-minute creative writing workshop to help improve your craft in short story and poetry. These workshops will also help you generate ideas to create an entry piece of writing for the Living Stories Writing Prize.
You may enter the competition, even if you are unable to attend a free workshop. You may attend a free workshop, even if you are unable to enter the competition.
History of Living Stories
The Living Stories Western Sydney Writing Prize is a creative writing competition for residents of Western Sydney, Wingecarribee and Wollondilly Shire, which is home to over 2.5 million Australians originating from 180 countries, speaking almost 100 different languages, and residing in 14 local government areas.
The competition began in 2021 with assistance from NSW Government as part of its support to the Arts sector recovering from the first year of the COVID pandemic and presented in conjunction with WestLit Libraries, an association of library services from across the region. The competition was the first of its kind for Western Sydney. We were also grateful for support from Australian Catholic University who were the category sponsor for the 16-18 year old category.
The thematic prompt for the competition was in 2021 was Are We Here Yet? To assist the writers we offered in excess of 40 free workshops in libraries across Western Sydney and online. There are winner and highly commended entries awarded in each age category in each participating LGA. The winners then go onto a second round of judging to determine over all winners and highly commended stories and poems. All the 67 regional winners and highly commended work get published in an anthology. In 2021 the book was to be launched at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre by our patrons Her Excellency The Honourable Margaret Beazley AO QC, Governor of NSW and Mr Dennis Wilson but that was the first day of the extended lockdown that characterised life in Western Sydney in the second half of that year. Instead the launch was held virtually in a lovely ceremony when such things were relatively novel.
In 2022, with no dedicated COVID recovery funds from Government we felt that a grassroots writing competition to provide a platform and visibility for the voices in Western Sydney was important. This year the prompt was things unsaid. In 2022 we welcomed Booktopia as the category sponsor for the 10-12 year old category joining Australian Catholic University. In 2023 we were excited that James Kirby Foundation partnered with us. A competition of this size is not an insignificant undertaking and we sincerely thank all our partners, library staff, writers and contributors for their contributions. A launch of the publication, and the announcement of the winners took place both online and in person, at Parramatta Square, with over 200 people in attendence.
Across 2023 and 2024, Living Stories continued to grow and thrive. The James N. Kirby Foundation came on board as a partner in 2023 as we launched the theme The Other City. In 2024, we returned with the theme Over the Line …? We’ve continued to host, each year, over 40+ in person writing workshops at participating libraries across Western Sydney.
On August 3rd, 2024 we welcomed over 262 people through our doors at the WestWords Centre for Writing, for our Living Stories Over the Line …? publication showcase event!
There is no other event on our calendar quite like it – as we invite all the featured writers onto our stage to celebrate and read their award-winning short stories and poems in front of their friends and family. The award-winners come from all across Western Syndey – and as far south as Wingecarribee – to celebrate this day. Readers ranged from ages 10 to adults, featuring experienced performers and first-time readers alike, up on the same stage. The joy in the room was infectious, the photos below capture only a small portion of so many wonderful moments. Congratulations all on your strength of creativity, voice and diverse perspectives.
Only I can Say was the theme for 2025. This was our competition’s 5th year, and the largest year yet, with over 500 entries, and over 300 people attending the 2025 Living Stories showcase day at WestWords Western Sydney Centre for Writing on July 19th, 2025.
Thank you to our first round judges who read approx. 500 entries, and awarded the winning, highly commended and special mention awards. We thank them for their time, expertise, and careful deliberation for Living Stories competition. We’d also like to thank our partners, WestLit Libraries, Create NSW, Arab Bank Australia, and Australian Catholic University for making this program possible.
We see the competition contributes to the central mission of WestWords to provide pathways and opportunities for the stories of Western Sydney to be celebrated and heard. Click on the icons below for more information, to read and enjoy the work emanating from this richly diverse part of Australia.
Past Winners and Publications
Previous Digital Workshops – view online
Bryan Brown Reading from Living Stories: The Other City
We are grateful to WestWords ambassador, Bryan Brown, for taking the time to share his reading of one of the overall winning pieces in the 'Living Stories: The Other City' anthology.
WestWords Living Stories Online Creative Writing Workshop for Adults
Michelle Hamadache, Director of Creative Writing at Macquarie University, will help you out with ideas, techniques and inspiration to assist you in getting a poem or short story written in time to submit into the Living Stories competition.
WestWords Living Stories Online Creative Writing Workshop for 16-18yr olds
Adam Byatt takes young writers through some tips and tools of the trade in this online writing workshop, aimed at 16 to 18 year olds.
WestWords Living Stories Online Creative Writing Workshop for 13-15yr olds
Join Kim Pham as she runs 13 to 15yr olds through a hands-on Living Stories Online Creative Writing Workshop to help them develop a short story or poem on the theme of 'the other city' in real time.
WestWords Living Stories Online Creative Writing Workshop for 10-12yr olds
In a Living Stories Online Creative Writing Workshop, Liz Ledden helps 10 to 12yr olds brainstorm place, characters and plot, as well as utilise mindmaps to assist in the creation of a story or poem.
Living Stories Western Sydney Writing Prize 2021 – announcement of winners and book launch
"The WestWords/WestLit "Living Stories" Western Sydney Writing Prize took place over all thirteen local government areas in Western Sydney, with one winner and one highly commended entry for each of the four age categories -- 10-12yrs, 13-15yrs, 16-18yrs, and 18+....
Writing Workshop with Rawah Arja, 13-15 yrs
Writing Workshop with Scot Gardner, 16-18 yrs
Poetry Workshop with Harry Laing, 10-16 yrs
