The Places Writing Competition by Minds Shine Bright is open and calling for entries of short stories, flash fiction and poems until 31 May 2025. The first prize is $1500 and you can enter Places here.
With each competition we look forward to adding different genres to our collections and for Places we are looking forward to reading stories and poems inspired by travel, and by writers whose first language isn’t English. For the first time there is a $500 prize for the best English as a Second Language writer. We look forward to receiving stories about weird, wonderful and out of the way places; places rich in history and custom; places that signify home or places that have been left behind. Find the full list of prizes and terms and conditions here.
To encourage young writers we have added a Young Writer’s Prize of $250 for the best young writer, aged 15 and under, and we look forward to making Minds Shine Bright’s first book for young readers by young writers. We will be publishing two anthologies including Places and Young Writers’ Places.
Often the setting and location of a story takes a supporting role to create atmosphere and mood.  As ‘place’ has been elevated to the key focus for this writing competition, the challenge for writers will be to create a piece of creative writing that transcends simple description and tells its own story.
Light and Shadow, the second book in the Seasons Series by Minds Shine Bright, is coming soon. Sublimely dark and light with moments of illumination, Light and Shadow  is  a powerful and authentic contemporary anthology to add to your 2025 Reading List.
The Light and Shadow Book Launch will be held on Saturday 28th June 2025 at the St Kilda Sports Club, St Kilda, Melbourne from 12:00pm to 4:00pm. Join us for a fun and inspirational afternoon of readings by local and international Minds Shine Bright writers and poets and a light lunch. You can order a copy of Light and Shadow with your ticket too and you can register for the Light and Shadow Book Launch here. If you are a budding writer or poet you can register to read at the Open Mike section of the event too.
Light and Shadow anthology features forty three talented writers and poets, the winning and commended writers from the Minds Shine Bright Seasons Writing competition. We look forward to promoting them in future updates and on our social media channels. You can see the list of the shortlisted writers here. As we move closer to the Launch we will also be sending out e-certificates of merit to Long Listed writers and gifts and certificates of recognition to writers whose work shone in some way.
Light and Shadow has been one of our most engaging competition themes. Our Writing Light and Shadow workshops have been enjoyed by students, adults and the Schizy Inc. writers who included a Writing Light and Shadow chapter in their remarkable community anthology Glimmer. If you are interested in reading fiction by writers with lived experience of diverse mental health, you can order Glimmer by emailing studio@schizy.org(subject line ‘Glimmer’).
In addition to our thematic workshops we also run workshops on short stories, flash fiction, short form fiction and script writing. We can tailor creative writing workshops to suit your needs. If you are interested in having a Minds Shine Bright workshop as part of your festival, book fair or literary event you can contact us here,
You can buy Minds Shine Bright books at the Minds Shine Bright Bookshop. Each Minds Shine Bright book tells its own story, has a unique and eye catching cover and provides a credible collection of stories and poems. Minds Shine Bright anthologies offer collections of short stories and poems from a community of local and international writers that are carefully judged and curated. If you enjoy different perspectives, the lastest developments in contemporary fiction and poetry and a sense of our times consider reading one of the Minds Shine Bright anthologies.
If you only read novels don’t be afraid to stretch yourself a little. It can be both challenging and rewarding to embrace the anthology form. There is a lot to discover in a collection and they are great to ‘dip in and out’ of in between some of your bigger reads, at bedtime or on your daily commute. You may even find a treasured piece to revisit. One of the most exciting things about judging the Minds Shine Bright writing competition is the exposure it brings to new ways of writing and the fresh perspectives that undiscovered and underrepresented writers bring.
We don’t accept donations, but we appreciate your support in buying Minds Shine Bright books. All of our published writers are paid prize money and healthy books sales help us to promote writers further. Your support in buying our books helps us to keep the Minds Shine Bright website and competition going and it helps us to pay the dedicated and talented professionals we engage to bring each Minds Shine Bright book to life.
If you prefer to support your local bookshop or library you can order a copy in using the distributor name and ISBNs below.
Bookshop and library buyers can order Minds Shine Bright books directly from our distributor Ingram. The ISBNs of our print books are:
Confidence 978-0-6455231-0-2
Confidence 2 978-0-6455231-4-0
Storm Seasons 978-0-6455231-2-6
Light and Shadow Seasons 2 (available from late June) 978-0-6455231-6-4
For a preview of Confidence 2 you can view readings by Confidence 2 writers on our YouTube channel and you can watch the Confidence 2 Launch on the Geelong Regional Library’s channel too. Some of the Light and Shadow writers will be featured too, following the June launch.
You can find Minds Shine Bright accounts to follow on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky Social (@wattlelight.bsky.social), Linked In and TikTok  so subscribe or follow us for reading and writing inspiration and news about our writers and Minds Shine Bright books. Remember to subscribe to our monthly updates too if you haven’t already.
It’s Autumn in Melbourne, the air is crisper, and the daylight hours are shorter, so there is more time to read and write indoors. The colours of autumn are vibrant against the shifting greys of the sky and the first winter seedlings are starting to emerge. In the Northern Hemisphere it’s the start of spring, a season of growth and renewal and a good time to start your next creative project. If you need some help to get started you can tap into our writing resources page.
To inspire some writing about places please enjoy a couple of short pieces about places that have meant something special to me.
My great grandmother lived in a narrow, two storey, weatherboard house with a big backyard and a room full of old newspapers in the attic. My granddad took me for a drive there one day, sitting me next to him on the bench seat of his car. My great grandmother came to the flywire door in her apron. She opened it, welcomed us in, and gave me a banana. In the living room sat two rocking chairs which were too big for me to rock. I explored the garden, wandering along overgrown paths that I could easily lose myself in and when I was called back inside, I dreaded climbing up the rickety backstairs.
Visiting the Pyramids of Giza I was unprepared for how visually stunning the triangle of pyramid against blue sky would be. Back in Cairo, people, movement, the river, the tangy freshness of fava bean dip accompanied by sweet black tea, donkeys pulling vegetable laden carts through traffic and the sumptuous wedding party at the airport hotel where I stayed, after realising — during a misdirected taxi ride and a mix up with daylight savings time—  that the jet disappearing overhead was my flight back to London.
This year marked Minds Shine Brights first time attending the Clunes Booktown Festival. We registered as a book seller and joined over one hundred other book traders of old, new and rare books. The whole community of Clunes came together making the event a remarkable success. It was great to see small independent presses, alongside second-hand sellers, self-published authors and independent bookshops, and there was a calendar of literary events, with well loved writers, to attend as well. We were delighted by visits from Minds Shine Bright writers Alexandra O’Sullivan, Karen Lee Mills and Kate Foulds and we shared our marquee space with Bruna from Ballarat Writers.
It was a fantastic opportunity to promote our community of writers by showcasing their work to a new audience of book lovers. We look forward to returning again in the future and we hope to see more community based literary events like this flourish in the years to come.
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