Minds Shine Bright

Minds Shine Bright acknowledges the people of the Kulin nations, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we live and work and where this website was made. We pay respects to their long history and culture, and their Elders, past, present and emerging.

What is Minds Shine Bright?

Minds Shine Bright is an arts business based in Melbourne Australia committed to supporting the arts and writers. We run two fiction writing competitions each year. Minds Shine Bright Confidence, a longitudinal look at confidence in fiction and Seasons a competition with a changing theme which in 2022 was Storm.

We also publish beautiful books. Confidence, Minds Shine Bright Anthology 2022 was launched at the Wheeler Centre on 28 October 2022 in Melbourne. We work hard to get more books into bookshops and libraries and to build a strong following of anthology loving readers.

You can purchase the Confidence anthology at the Minds Shine Bright online bookshop or at discerning bookstores that support independent publishers.

Confidence writing competition

Minds Shine Bright Confidence writing competition aims to captures and share how fiction writers explore the theme of confidence over time. Four categories including short stories, poetry, flash fiction and short scripts are included. The competition is blind judged, entries are assessed against ten criteria and there are many entries so the judging process takes several months.Once judging is complete there is an online Awards Night and once the anthology is curated, edited and designed and published there is a celebratory launch.

As writers discover and explore different elements and layers of the confidence theme we look forward to seeing how the series of Confidence anthologies evolves and what we can learn from it about our times and trends in contemporary fiction and poetry writing.

Prizes

This year we have increased our prize pool to support our aim of paying writers fairly for their work. All prizes are shown in Australian dollars. International entries are welcomed.

$1600 – The overall winner, plus publication in Confidence Minds Shine Bright Anthology 2023

$800 – for each of the four category winners plus publication in Confidence Minds Shine Bright Anthology 2023 (The overall winner is excluded from all other prizes) Categories include short stories, short scripts, flash fiction and poetry)

$175 – for each commended entry plus publication in Confidence Minds Shine Bright Anthology 2023

15 certificates of recognition and gifts will be sent to writers whose creativity shone in some way.

Terms and Conditions

Each entry must be original, unpublished fiction or poetry written by the submitting author and included the theme of confidence in some way.Please read the full list of terms and conditions on the Terms and Conditions Page.

Seasons writing competition

Judging for Storm is almost complete and we have updated entrants on the Longlist and the Shortlist. We are still selecting our Gifts and Certificates of Recognition. The Competition winner and placeholders will be announced at an online Awards Night soon and the Storm Anthology will be launched in mid 2023 the first in our new Seasons series.

The Seasons writing competition has themes that relate to the external world, and imagined worlds. This competition has smaller prizes, smaller word limits and focuses on a smaller set of writers. Our next Seasons Writing Competition Light and Shadow will open in April 2023.