Sydney Jewish writer awards expand to six categories

Shalom Collective will present six prizes at its annual Australian Jewish Writer Awards in August, adding poetry, illustrated manuscripts and emerging writers to a program that has grown steadily since its founding two years ago.

The Shalom Collective Australian Jewish Writer Awards will expand to six categories in 2026, with the addition of prizes for poetry, unpublished illustrated manuscripts and young writers, the most significant broadening of the program since its inaugural year in 2024.

Submissions for works published during the 2025 calendar year are open now and close on 26 April. Winners will be announced at a ceremony on 30 August 2026. The awards are funded in partnership with the JCA (Jewish Communal Appeal) and administered by Shalom Collective, a Sydney-based not-for-profit whose cultural programming also includes the Sydney Jewish Writers Festival and the Jewish Food Festival.

Rabbi Alon Meltzer, Director of Programs at Shalom Collective, said the expansion reflected sustained demand from within the community. “After the success of the past two years, it’s clear that our community has a deep hunger to see Jewish stories told, shared, and celebrated,” he said. “We are thrilled to expand the awards this year to recognise even more forms of writing.”

The program’s flagship prize, the Leslie and Sophie Caplan Award for Jewish Non-Fiction, offers $10,000 for works of significant relevance to the Jewish experience. Endowed by the Caplan family in honour of their parents, described as pillars of the Sydney Jewish community with a keen interest in modern Jewish history and literature, the award has been won by Michael Gawenda for ‘My Life as a Jew’ (2024) and Jana Vytrhlik for ‘Treasures of Old Jewish Sydney’ (2025).

The Edith Hausmann Award for Jewish Playwrights, which also carries a prize of $10,000, is open to writers aged between 18 and 45 and is awarded for an unproduced script. It was donated by Judi Hausmann in honour of her mother. Last year’s recipient was Elise Hearst for ‘Batsheva’.

The Szymon (Simon) Klitenik Award for Jewish Fiction, worth $5,000 and donated by Dr Janet Hiller, commemorates a man who emigrated from Poland to Australia in 1939 and was killed in action serving with the Australian Imperial Forces in 1945, at the age of 21. Linda Margolin Royal won the 2025 prize for ‘The Star on the Grave’.

Each of the three new categories is similarly grounded in personal history. The Bobby Adler Award for Young Jewish Writers, valued at $5,000, was donated by the Shad Family in memory of Bobby Adler.

The Chaya Fedler Award for Poetry ($500) was donated by Sydney author Joanne Fedler in honour of her paternal grandmother, Chaya Fedler (Michelson). The Dov Fedler Award for Unpublished Illustrated Manuscripts ($500) was bequeathed by Joanne Fedler to honour her late father.

Dov Fedler was one of South Africa’s most distinguished political cartoonists, spending more than five decades at The Star newspaper in Johannesburg. His archive of more than 3,000 cartoons, produced across the apartheid era and its aftermath, constitutes an enduring record of one of the twentieth century’s defining political struggles. Joanne Fedler, who trained as a lawyer at Yale University, co-founded a legal advocacy centre for women in South Africa before emigrating to Australia. She has published fifteen books and established herself as one of the country’s leading writing mentors.

The inclusion of a poetry category addresses a gap that had been noted since the awards’ inception, given both the depth of the Jewish poetic tradition and the vitality of contemporary Jewish poets working in Australia. Its introduction this year, alongside the illustrated manuscript prize, signals an intention to recognise the full breadth of literary expression rather than confine the program to conventional prose categories.

Submissions are now open. Full entry guidelines are available at shalomcollective.com.au.