AUT New Zealand Creative Writing Competition

ArionWhere applying and enrolled students can access AUT course information, check your enrolment status, make fee payments, update your personal details and view your academic results.
AUTOnlineOnline access to course resources and learning activities through AUT's central learning management system.
UnicentralUniCentral is the AUT University Student Portal. Here you will find useful information about you as a student and quicklinks to all the important online systems you will need to use while studying at AUT University.

Study areas

Language and Cultures

Home > Study at AUT > Study areas > Language and Cultures > Creative Writing Competition

AUT New Zealand Creative Writing Competition

Competition logo 2011-12

Spend this summer doing great works.

AUT’s third annual creative writing competition has now CLOSED. Judges will be carefully reviewing all of our 344 entries over the next two months. We hope to announce finalists by mid March and winners by mid-April.

Watch this space or check out updates on Facebook: www.facebook.com/autcreativewriting

If you missed out on entering this year, the 2012-2013 competition is expected to open Oct 31st, 2012.

There were three categories in the 2011-2012 competition:

Short story: Emerging (15 - 20 years)
Short story: Open (21 years and over)
Short graphic fiction: Open (15 years and over)

Unpublished writers only

All entrants must be unpublished writers only. An unpublished writer is one who has not had a fiction work appear in trade book format. This means that the writer has not had fiction work appear in book format available for sale to the general public.

Prizes

Each category winner receives an iPad 2 as well as mentoring time with a leading New Zealand writer. Second place receives an iPod Touch and mentoring time and third place wins an iPod Classic and mentoring time.

Short story

The short story has a word limit of 2000 words. There is no theme - you can write on any subject.

Entries must be:

in English
an original work of fiction for which the entrant is the sole author and which has not been previously professionally or commercially published and is not in breach of any third party right

typed in 12 point font
in double or 1-1/2 line spacing, with wide margins

Short Graphic Fiction

PDF Format (low resolution under 2 megabytes)
Entries may be with or without words
Entries may be in black and white or in colour
Entries must be an original work of which the entrant is the sole author which has not been previously professionally or commercially published and is not in breach of any third party right
Entries must be complete in itself (i.e. not a fragment of a larger work).
Entries must be a minimum of 4 pages and maximum of 8 pages
Each page is to be A4 size and the format can be portrait or landscape