The 2025 Living Stories Western Sydney Writing Prize:
Only I can say
WestWords and WestLit Libraries are proud to present the
2025 Living Stories Western Sydney Writing Prize
This year, we are asking you to respond to the theme …
Only I can say
Who else sees what I see?
Feels what I feel?
Only I know where I’ve been, and where I am going.
The adventures I’ve been on. The places I will travel.
The people I know, and those I will one day meet.
Oh, the conversations we will have …
What secrets do I hold?
What thoughts?
What stories?
What worlds live in my imagination?
Only I can say.
Living Stories 2025
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 2025 – The Competition
Enter now!
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 is your opportunity to share your story.
If you are aged 10 years or older, and live in 1 of the 14 competing LGAs, we want your piece of writing responding to the theme
Only I can say
The Living Stories Western Sydney Writing Prize returns for its 5th year in 2025. 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 $8,000.
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). To enter, follow this link to our online submission form.
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.
Living Stories is made possible thanks to the generous support of our 2025 partners: WestLit Libraries, Create NSW, Arab Bank Australia, and Australian Catholic University.
Entries are now open!
Click here to submit via our online form
Competition Dates
Competition Opens: 21 March, 2025.
Competition closes: 5 May, midnight, 2025
Announcement of LGA winners: Early June – via online announcement (WestWords social media and newsletter)
Announcement of Overall Winners and book launch: end of July school holidays. Date & Location TBC. This is an RSVP’d event.
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, 2025.
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 anthology launch in July 2025.
The writing prize age categories are as follows:
10 – 12 years;
13 – 15 years;
16 – 18 years;
and adults (18+).
The four winners, and four highly commended entrants, from each competing LGA will have their short story/poem published in the 2025 Living Stories Anthology: Only I can say
The four winners, and four highly commended entrants, from each competing LGA will receive a cash prize. Prize pool to be announced on the competition launch date.
These cash prizes are made possible thanks to the generous support of our 2025 partners: Create NSW, Arab Bank Australia, and Australian Catholic University.
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 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: Only I can say
- We encourage participants not to name their work ‘Only I can say’. 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 2025 Living Stories: Only I can say 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 2025 Living Stories: Only I can say Anthology.
- The applicant’s name must not appear on the entry file.
Living Stories 2025 – The Workshops
In conjunction with the prize, WestWords will run free writing workshops across Western Sydney’s libraries, and online, during the April school holidays, 2025.
Attend a free 90-minute creative writing workshop hosted by a local professional writer 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.
Keep scrolling: information on the workshops will appear below throughout March. Please see the list of our partner libraries for Living Stories, and keep an eye out for workshops as they are announced to be able to RSVP.
Blacktown City
Click on the image below to RSVP to the creative writing workshop
Campbelltown City
Click on the image below to RSVP to the creative writing workshop
The Hills Shire
Click on the image below to RSVP to the creative writing workshop
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, 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.
Congratulations to all the highly commended and winning writers of this year’s Living Stories Western Sydney Writing Prize who are featured in the publication Over the Line …? and an extra congratulations to those who performed at the showcase day last weekend! You can view the video of the same event from 2023.
Thank you to our first round judges who read approx. 400 entries, and awarded the winning, highly commended and special mention awards. We thank them for their time, expertise, and careful deliberation for the 2024 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
Writing Workshop with Luke Johnson, 18+ yrs
