The eleven best entries from the Tasmanian Writers’ Prize 2026 as selected by Rayne Allinson, Nadia Mahjouri & Alan Carter

Cover image: The lighthouse at Hells Gates by Pen Tayler

As far as artistic experiences go, short stories are particularly hard to explain. They are usually smaller than a novel and usually longer than a poem – though Hemingway, always the rebel, is supposed to have penned the shortest story of all time: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Regardless of length, the best short stories combine the familiarity of long form narrative with the epiphanic release of a haiku. For this reason, there is something vaguely unsettling about them. “A novel wants to befriend,” the writer Joy Williams says, “a short story almost never.” 

Corey Docking (TAS) | Asylum with a refugee

Simon Brown (NSW) | Eilean

Sue Barker (NZ) | Island getaway

Elaine Chennatt (TAS) | King Billy pine

Moddey Doon (SA) | The ideal way of living

Paulette Gittins (VIC) | The Mistress Stone

Ilonka Guse (NT) | The island

Jared Kranz (QLD) | Lost sands

Megan McGrath (QLD) | Wreckage

Carol Millner (WA) | Swimming to Australia

Kathy Shortland-Jones (WA) | Salt five ways

BONUS STORIES from the Young Tasmanian Writers’ Prize 2025
Zoey Tenaglia (Calvin Christian School) | Sunny side up
Billie Lowenstein (Elizabeth College) | All that glitters