The sidney prize, named after Sidney Lanier (1917- ), is awarded annually to a writer for a short fiction piece that engages and extends the tradition of Southern literature. It is open to all writers, nationally and internationally, at any stage of their writing career.

This prize is offered by Overland, an Australian literary and cultural magazine. The award is supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, and the winner receives $5,000 AUD.

Writers should submit a story of up to 3000 words themed around the notion of ‘travel’; imaginative, creative and literary interpretations are encouraged. The piece may be either a poem, a short story or a flash fiction.

The deadline for submissions is March 13, 2023; finalists will be announced in Overland’s autumn 2023 issue. The prize is open to anyone and may be used to support travel and research costs for the prize winner.

In addition to the main award, the Foundation awards a number of honorable mentions. Each honorable mention will receive a certificate and a copy of the winning story, which will be published in Overland.

Several of these awards are made in conjunction with other prizes and publications, such as the PEN/Faulkner Award or the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Authors should check the website for the specific competition they’re submitting to for prize consideration and entry requirements.

Overland Prize for Short Fiction

Overland is an Australian literary and cultural magazine whose mission is to “engage a wider audience with the best writing from the continent”. The prize was launched in 2012 and is named after the 19th-century Southern poet Sidney Lanier.

The winner of the Overland Prize will receive a $5,000 AUD cash prize and their story will be published in the magazine’s autumn 2023 issue. The prize has been awarded to writers for more than two centuries, and over the years it has shaped the Australian literary scene.

One of the most important contributions Sidney Altman has made to the field of molecular biology is his discovery of ribonuclease-P, an enzyme that carries out a chemical reaction in living cells. This was a controversial discovery that broke with the traditional dogma that molecules could carry information, like RNA, or catalyze chemical reactions, like proteins, but not both.

This was a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the cell, and opened the door to many new fields of scientific research and biotechnology. Using a recombinant RNA template, Altman and his co-workers were able to produce ribonuclease-P without the protein component that had previously been thought necessary for its enzymatic function.

Despite this revolutionary finding, there were still many who disagreed with the idea that RNA could carry out an enzymatic role in the cell. This led to a debate over whether RNA was actually needed for its enzymatic activity, or if it could be artificially produced and still carry out the required reaction.

This debate was resolved with the help of Sidney Altman and his colleagues at Yale. Sidney, a former physicist, was able to prove that ribonuclease-P could be produced artificially and that it still carried out the required enzymatic activity. This discovery won Altman a share of the 1989 Nobel Prize in chemistry.