The Voiceworks crew have heard that some of you are writing longer stories—investigating characters, narratives and environments further than our 3,000-word limit allows—but are not quite sure what to do with them. Sure, there are prizes, but outside of this there are very few avenues for publication, especially for young writers.

We want to see what’s out there. We want to publish the seriously good longform fiction young writers are working on.

About Voiceworks

Published by Express Media, Voiceworks is Australia’s premier youth literary journal, featuring exciting new fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art and comics by people under the age of 25. Voiceworks is produced entirely by people yet to hit the quarter century mark, and relies on contributions from readers to make up its content. Each selected piece goes through a collaborative editing process, and individualised feedback is provided for all unsuccessful submissions. All published contributors are paid for their work.

The best way to get a sense of who we are is to read Voiceworks! You can get yourself a copy by ordering it online, subscribing or waltzing into one of these fine retailers.

What we’re looking for

We will accept work between 7,000 and 10,000 words.

We are open to self-contained works to be published in a single issue, as well as episodic stories suited to serialised publication across multiple issues. We encourage submissions of various fiction styles, be that ‘literary’, genre (sci-fi, mystery, historical, etc.), and work that blurs the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction. We will, naturally, smile upon funny writing, and work that experiments with style and form.

We are not looking for fanfiction, hard-boiled crime, romance, screenplays, play scripts or children’s literature.

Don’t sweat about the upcoming issue’s theme—selected work will be published in a later issue.

Rules help control the fun

—We are only able to publish writers who are under the age of 25 (that is, 24 and under) at the time of submission.

—We only accept work by people living in Australia (including international students) or by Australians living overseas.

—We only consider previously unpublished work.

—We will accept work simultaneously submitted to prizes or other publications, so long as you contact us as soon as possible if your work is shortlisted on editor@expressmedia.org.au.

—We will accept no more than two submissions per person.

Deadline

Sunday 14 May, 11:59pm

Payment

$300 for published work

Editing and feedback

As always, submissions will be read blindly by our editorial committee, and published submissions will go through a rigorous, collaborative editing process. The number we publish, be that a bunch or none, will all depend on the work submitted.

If your submission is unsuccessful, we will notify you as soon as we can. If you think something has gone wrong, or you haven’t heard back from us three months after the submission deadline, please get in touch.

Unfortunately, we are unable to provide feedback on longform fiction submissions. For those who are unfamiliar with Voiceworks, we provide individualised feedback on all unsuccessful submissions to the quarterly journal. This work is done by a bunch of volunteers, whose evenings and weekends are already filled to the brim with providing support to the hundreds of writers who submit work each issue. If you’re keen to get some feedback on your writing, then you should totally submit (shorter) work to our upcoming issue. Further details can be found on our Contribute page.

Submit

Alrighty then, it’s time to submit—just follow the link below. Please read the information carefully and contact Voiceworks editor Lucy Adams if you have any questions or concerns.