Would you like to see your art on the cover of a book or illustrating its inner pages? Calling young artists, parents and art teachers, the Minds Shine Bright Young Illustrators’ Competition is open and calling for entries from artists aged 15 and under until 31 March 2026.
The theme of the competition is Places. The winning entry will appear on the cover of the Minds Shine Bright Young Writers Places Anthology and up to five line drawings will be selected to illustrate the inner pages. First prize for cover artwork in colour is $200 and each black and white line drawing selected for publication on the internal pages will receive $30. Each winner will also receive a copy of the Young Writers Places Anthology which will be published later this year.
The image for this month’s Minds Shine Bright update is from the Blue Lotus Water Garden, a place we loved visiting. We want to see your favourite places, your special places or places you have had to leave behind. It might be a favourite holiday spot, a natural place that you love or a place that interests you. It could be an imaginary place or a connected map of places, a travel route or a travel related place or thing. Drawings, paintings and cartoons are all welcome. Cover art can be painted or drawn in colour and illustrations for the inner pages must be in black pen or black Texta only. Each artist can submit up to two pieces of artwork and all artwork must be done by hand on A4 paper in portrait orientation. So get drawing and send us your most creative and original artwork.
The competition will be judged by artist and book designer Dr Caren Florance and Minds Shine Bright Founder Amanda Scotney. I can’t wait to see the anthology come to life with place based illustrations from young artists and stories and poems from young writers.
For more information you can read the full list of terms and conditions here , and you can enter the Young Illustrator’s Competition here. Parental approval is required to enter and Entry fees cost $1-$5 (pay what you can afford). Entry fees contribute towards prizes and publication costs.
School group entries are welcome too. Scanned entries and entrant information can be emailed directly to us. If you are interested in submitting a group entry, please contact us.
Places Writing Competition Update
We are very close to the end of all of the judging rounds now and we will be finalizing our judging within in the next two weeks. From mid-March we will be writing to each entrant advising whether or not each piece entered has been selected for the long list or the short list.
We will also provide some general feedback for entrants on what we found, what stood out and some areas for improvement. We are aiming to send out all emails by the end of March.
All shortlisted entrants will receive an invitation to an online Announcement of Shortlist for Publication and Winnersevent. As Easter is in early April the Announcement of Winners events have been moved to the week following and will occur from the 10th to the 12th April.
Clunes Booktown Festival
If you are in Victoria, and you love books as much as we do, head to Clunes in regional Victoria for the annual Clunes Booktown Festival on the weekend of the 21st and 22nd March. There are 120 book traders and heaps of literary events and workshops to explore. Our stall, the Minds Shine Bright Bookshop, will be in Fraser Street, near the pub, so come and have a chat with us and grab a copy of a Minds Shine Bright book from our Confidence (Confidence 1 or Confidence 2 )or Seasons (Storm or Light and Shadow) series or Schizy Inc’s community anthology Glimmer. We love to catch up with all of our published writers too so if you are coming to Clunes please drop by.
If you haven’t subscribed to our monthly update and would like to keep up to date with Minds Shine Bright competitions, news and events you can subscribe here and you can buy a Minds Shine Bright anthology at the online Minds Shine Bright Bookshop