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Overview
This is a theme-based, short-form writing competition.
The theme for this year’s competition is Unspoken Worlds Within.
The word limit for this competition is 5000 words. You may choose the genre.
Submit your entries using this form. Entries close on the 14th of November, 2026.
Winners to be announced towards the beginning of December.
Prizes
Bookstore gift vouchers and books – courtesy of Gleebooks and Constant Reader.
Writing lessons – courtesy of Spectrum Writing, who are judging the competition.
Rules
This competition is open to people resident in Australia who are already, or will be, the age of eighteen (18) or over on the 14th of November, 2026.
Submissions by autistic contestants only (whether diagnosed or self-identifying).
Contestants shall enter the competition by filling in the provided Submission Form.
Submissions shall be in English.
Submissions shall have a word limit of five thousand (5000) words.
Submissions shall be made accessible via the Internet for judges to read in one of three formats:
* Link to a web page (HTML)
* Link to a Google Doc in read-only format.
* Link to a PDF file. This can be uploaded to contestants’ personal web space, or to a file sharing service such as Google Drive or Dropbox.
Submissions shall be made accessible to the judges for free, and must not require a payment or purchase for access.
Contestants may make multiple submissions during the submissions period. However, only the last submission made by a contestant prior to the closing date will be judged.
Submissions can be in any genre and will be judged on how well they articulate the competition theme.
All submissions shall be contestants’ original work. No plagiarism is allowed. No works based on material for which contestants do not hold copyright shall be allowed; this means no fan fiction.
No text generated using large language models or any form of artifical intelligence.
No works that promote the belief that applied behaviour analysis as a suitable therapy for autistic people shall be allowed. No works that promote the belief that vaccines cause autism shall be allowed. No works that promote the belief that autism can be cured and/or is a disease shall be allowed. Submissions which include – but do not promote the aforementioned subjects positively – might be allowed.
The deadline for submissions shall be Saturday, the 14th of November at 11:59pm Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time.
The judges’ decisions on entries are final.
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