Results: FAW NSW 2025 Writing Competitions

The 2025 Hilarie Lindsay Short Story Competition for Australian School Students

This year we awarded our first ever Certificate of Excellence. The student was Yunha Back from Kent Road public school. You can read Yunha’s story here.

WINNERS: 

Junior Primary A – Year 2: Eleanor Searle, Dubbo South Primary School, for ‘Fairy Land’ 
Junior Primary B – Year 4: James Liu, Knox Grammar Preparatory School, for ‘Life as a Movie’ 
Senior Primary– Year 6: Yunha Back, Kent Road Public School, for ‘Where the Sound of Light Exists’ 
Junior Secondary – Year 7: Allegra Barboza Martello, Central Coast Steiner School, for ‘The Girls Who Don’t Sit Still’ 
Senior Secondary – Year 10: Mia Jackson, Churchland Senior High School, for ‘Must Have: The End’.

---

The 2025 Marjorie Barnard Short Story Award

WINNER:  
Catherine McElroy, Young NSW, for ‘Swinging Gates’. Read Catherine’s story here.

---

The 2025 Ernestine Hill Memorial Short Story Award 

WINNER:  
Susan Temby, Terry Hills NSW, for ‘Let This Place Speak’. Read Susan’s story here.

SHORT LISTED:  
Sharyn Munro, Port Macquarie NSW, for ‘Time for the Piper’  
Alex Elizabeth Wormald, Fitzroy VIC, for ‘Unsettled Earth’. 

---

The 2025 Rae Cerhan Australiana Ballad Award 

WINNER: 
Helen Harvey, Worrigee NSW, for ‘Song of the Depression’. Read Helen’s poem here. 

2nd PLACE: 
Rebecca Hodges, East Bentleigh VIC, for ‘Ballad of the Watercolour Outback’ 

3rd PLACE:  
Jodie Kewley, Red Hill South VIC, for ‘The Promised Rain’.

The above prize-winners were announced at the Annual FAW Awards Luncheon held in Sydney on May 2, 2026.