The Text Prize

The Text Prize for Young Adult and Children's Writing is an annual prize awarded to an outstanding unpublished manuscript. It aims to discover more wonderful new books for young readers, by Australian and New Zealand writers.

The Publisher at Text, Michael Heyward, hopes this award “will unearth some brilliant new writing for young readers, which we can take to the world as we have done for many adult writers on our list”.

Both published and unpublished writers of all ages are eligible to enter with works of fiction or non-fiction. Judged by a panel of editors from Text Publishing, the winning book will be announced during the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. The winner will receive a publishing contract with Text and a $10,000 advance against royalties.

We will be calling for entries in the 2010 Prize from 2 May to 25 June 2010. Entry forms will be available to download from this page at that time.

The 2009 winner was Leanne Hall, for her novel This Is Shyness.

In 2008 the inaugural prize was won by Richard Newsome’s adventure caper, The Billionaire’s Curse, published by Text in August 2009.