The Pearl Prize 2025

Jay Arnold was raised in Far North Queensland. After university, they lived and wrote variously in  Melbourne, Europe and the United Kingdom – however they only found their voice as an author  when they began telling the story of their hometown. The resulting work, Naked as Eve, won the  Bristol Short Story Prize in 2012. Their short fiction, Skeleton Creek, has since been included in the  2021 Faber Anthology. They are the author of five plays and their 2022 work, Blood Makes Noise,  was the subject of the documentary, The Kids Play, by director Libby Chow. In 2024, Jay received a  ‘highly commended’ from the Olga Masters Short Story Prize for their story, Flooding the Moment.  They’re currently finishing a full-length, gothic-literary novel set in the Far North. An unapologetic  misanthrope, Jay prefers the company of dogs to humans. Occasionally, an old friend will lure them  out of the house with the promise of beer and dancing.

A transwoman and career educator, Jeanette (she/her) has turned her passion for good storytelling  into a means of advocating for our community. Her story “An Inconsistent Line” which explores the  struggles of trans youth was longlisted in the 2024 Mansfield readers and writers short story  competition. Raised in a middle-class inner-city family in Melbourne she often struggled with a  single sex schooling environment but ultimately managed to achieve her dreams of attending  Melbourne University and graduating with a Masters in Secondary Teaching. Since then, Jeanette  has taught in some of the toughest public schools across Melbourne and Geelong with a proud  history in supporting student wellbeing and literacy.  

Since coming out in her 30s Jeanette has learned to draw heavily on her ongoing challenges and  experiences to advocate for the wider trans community and explore different ideas in her writing.  She often demonstrates an ability to blend a character driven literary style with more approachable  genres of writing so that everyone can experience enjoyment while being encouraged to reflect on a  range of social issues. This means prioritising the development of complex characters that are often  plagued with realistic flaws like self-doubt, greed and social isolation as they struggle with elements  of their own identity.

Craig Brown first fell in love with writing when he joined the Boy Scouts and found out he couldn’t tie knots, so decided to write a brief and biased history of the British monarchy. He received a writing badge, which they had to send away for. His need for public affirmation has  continued from that time.  

Since then, he’s had articles published in publications as diverse as Cinema Papers, the Green Guide  and Papua New Guinea’s The National. His article on coming out as a gay man with a church  background was published in the UK’s Metro. He was commissioned to co-author two non-fiction  books, one for a religious organisation (The Church From the Paddock) and Difference, which tells  the story of the philanthropic organisation, donkey wheel. A short story, The Waves Give and the  Waves Take, was also published in an anthology.  

Craig realised that he was gay in mid-2019, and since then has been working hard to better understand himself and meet Troye Sivan, Timothee Chalamet or Dan Levy. He works in international aid and development, has his own writing and editing business and continues to write,  with a bunch of projects that he is excited about but suspects he’s editing them to death. Since  mid-2023, he has been privileged to be a newsreader on JOY 94.9, where he has hosted The Open  Table since July 2024. A proud father of three wonderful grown children, an employee of a rescue  cat, Pablo, Craig enjoys meeting new people, socialising with close friends, having meaningful conversations, exploring the inner north, staying out too late and telling anyone who’ll listen that  we’re living in a golden age of television.

Linnea Burdon-Smith is a Naarm/Melbourne based writer. They write fiction and non-fiction that  focuses on social justice themes. They have been an editor for the demos journal and have been  published in the Bossy magazine. They currently work in the legal assistance sector and contribute  to research and policy papers that amplify the voices of victims/survivors of family violence.

Flick is a creative, producer, and devout homebody. They’re best known for writing the staged lesbian sci-fi series SLUNTIK™. They have a Master of  Theatre (Dramaturgy) from the Victorian College of the Arts, and their work has  been published with humana obscura, CREATurE Magazine, and YDAS. Flick  placed second in the 2023 Marj Wilke Short Story Prize, and was highly commended for a 2023 Writeabilty Fellowship with Writers Victoria. They were a  member of the Theatre Works SheWrites program in 2022-23, and a participant in  the Australia Plays Transform & La Mama 2024 Pathways Writing Intensive  Program.  

Flick has worked on projects and programs with La Mama, Australian Plays  Transform, Darebin Arts, Australia Theatre for Young People, Nightingale Content, The People, Arts Access Victoria, Rawcus, The Substation, Antipodes  Theatre Company, Unfunded Empathy, Opera Express, Theatre Works, Dollhouse Collective, Blacktown Arts, Queerspace Arts and more.  

They are a panellist for the Green Room Awards Association and a proud member of the MEAA. Flick is based in Naarm and can be found at www.flickflickcity.net.

Julien Furnace (any pronouns) was born and raised in France and moved to Melbourne 10 years  ago. They're Australian now. After a few years having a stint at stand-up comedy, which ended with  the Covid pandemic, they decided to try their luck at storytelling. After being shortlisted for  Midsumma’s Pearl Prize last year and being highly commended for the Outstanding Short Story  competition this year, they are happy to present Dateshifter And The Still Life, which is part of a  bigger project that has been in the works for a while. Julien is attracted to speculative fiction,  especially optimistic science-fiction, and is interested in how technological progress and scientific  discoveries can impact gender, sexuality, identity and raison d'être at a personal or social level.  They believe that in these very transformative times for humankind, it is important that writers ask  themselves these questions so they can build new utopias.

Words have helped me make sense of my world and it is through writing that I have  understood my unique place on the gender spectrum. I began writing at a teenager but it  wasn’t until 1990 that I consciously tried to capture my feelings in a written form. I wrote a  series of poems. The poems sat there for the next thirty years. 1n 2022, I found the words  between the poems. They poured out in a flood of pages and I published my first book  Stammering Against Truth in October 2024. In the book, I explore my sexuality and gender,  and identity as a lone twin.  

The gender I choose sets me free. My gender is not innate, not inborn and not forced on me. I create it and make it mine. My sense of myself refuses the extremes of male and female. I fly free of the binary and move in between.  

One on my poems, Eric, was runner-up in the Yorkshire Open Poetry Competition, in 1993.  Other poems were published as part of anthologies – New Beginnings (1993), Reflections  (1994) – and during the ‘Zero Tolerance of Violence against Women’ Exhibition run by  Renfrewshire Council, Scotland (1995). Joan Woodward published a version of my twin story  in The Lone Twin, 1998. The story, The Balloon Family, was short-listed at The Central Coast  Writers Festival and published in the anthology Central Coast Kaleidoscope (2001). Some  poems were published in the Central Coast Poet’s Inc. Anthologies (2002 and 2008). My  short story, Speaking through Dysfluency was published in November 2024 in the Seniors’  Stories Volume 10 (NSW Seniors Card Program initiative)

https://wengibson.com/

Judith Huang is a Singaporean Australian author, poet, science fiction translator, serial-arts collective-founder and multimedia artist.  

Her first novel, Sofia and the Utopia Machine, was shortlisted for the Epigram Books Fiction Prize  2017 and Singapore Book Awards 2019.  

Judith was a Hot Desk Fellow at the Centre for Stories in 2024 and a recipient of a Perth Poetry  Festival 2024 micro-residency. She has work published in Prairie Schooner, Asia Literary Review,  The South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, Lianhe Zaobao, QLRS, Portside Review, Stylus,  Mascara Review, QLRS, Cha, Loreli, Ceriph, LONTAR, Spittoon Magazine, Clockwise Cat, and  Asymptote, as well as various anthologies. She was the poetry editor of the anthology Perks of  Being Dumped (Marshall Cavendish, 2024).  

As an artist, she was commissioned to make the VR artwork Marcus and the Shadow for the Perth  Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) in 2022.  

As a science fiction translator, she was awarded the inaugural Rosetta Award for Science Fiction  and Fantasy translation in 2021, and her work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Future SF, Asymptote  and Tor anthology The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories (Tor, 2022).  

She founded YAWP!, the longest-running performance poetry competition in Singapore, in 2004,  was a co-founder of Spittoon Collective in China, which is now in over 14 cities, and is the co founder of Chilli Jam Open Mic in Perth.  

Judith graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in English and taught creative and academic  writing at Yale-NUS College.  

She is an avid knitter and a bunny enthusiast.

Jack Lewis-Edney is a writer who grew up in the south of England, where he completed  his BA with Honours in English Language. Since moving to Australia for a new adventure,  he has completed a course with the Australian Writers Centre, which re-ignited his passion  for storytelling. His first piece, some short prose about the afterlife, was published when he  was just seven years old.  

His favourite authors are Gabrielle Zevin, Stephen King and any other who can help you  get lost in a brand-new world. He enjoys writing that looks at everyday situations from a  different angle and dissecting the human experience in unusual ways.  

When not tapping away on his keyboard, Jack can be found playing video games,  crocheting, or playing fetch with his fluffy Tibetan Spaniel.

Tamsin Lillywhite (she/her) is a bisexual writer and Heritage Planner currently living on Wiradyuri  Country, NSW. Under the pen name Tamsin Lillywhite, she has authored On Earth, Where  There Are No Angels which is part one of a queer urban fantasy duology. The story follows  three main protagonists who have to work out what angels appearing will mean for their  identities. It is largely set in, and inspired by, Canberra, the city where Tamsin obtained a  Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing. Her experience of living in the beautiful garden city  built on top of unceded Ngunnawal Country motivated her to pursue further education in a  Bachelor of Planning.  

In pursuit of a career in local government, Tamsin did not abandon her creative  tendencies. In between studying Planning at Macquarie University, she wrote On Earth…,  its second part The Absence of June which has yet to be published, and had speculative  fiction short stories published in three issues of the university's student publication,  'Grapeshot'. As Senior Heritage Planner at Bathurst Regional Council, she writes signage  content promoting the heritage of marginalised people in the region.  

In her spare time, she teaches creative writing to kids, participates in the Central West  Writer’s Group and edits books for friends, including two instalments of the Flux  Catastrophe series by bisexual author Jonathan Weiss. She also founded Queer Cinema  Country Club to bring together queer people in Bathurst who want to talk all things cinema. 

Tamsin is currently seeking to have the first part of her duology republished.

Stephanie Mitchell began writing at a young age with a dream to one day be  published. Most of those words never ventured beyond her own eyes… until  recently. Stephanie creates character-driven works and always strives for a (mildly realistic) happy ending. She tries to always keep in mind that though the  book ends, the characters’ journeys continue beyond the page. Stephanie feels  blessed to have the support of a loving partner whose patience, kindness, and  persisting good humour brings light to all of her days. And a gorgeous gremlin cat  who has spent many hours dozing to the sound of taps on a keyboard. After  walking all over the laptop first, of course. Stephanie is grateful for the chance to  share a small part of her world with others and hopes to continue her writing  journey

Niko Satria (He/Him) is an emerging writer and data professional living in Wangal Country, Western Sydney. He was born in Indonesia. After completing his study and  briefly working in the United States, he decided to relocate to Australia. Niko enjoys experiencing the world differently through travel and history. His short story “Return  to Surabaya” was selected as a finalist and published in The Pearl Prize 2024. Niko  is currently working on a collection of short stories. When he is not traveling, reading,  or writing, Niko can be found chasing down unusual vintage wristwatches online.

Orlando Silver (he/ they) is a trans queer writer living and working on Darug and  Gundungurra lands. He is a playwright, fiction writer and poet. Orlando often focuses on  the intersections of desire, transgender identities and embodiment. He has two self  published books on trans masc desire, "Soft Fruit" and "Relent". He is the editor of "I Write  the Body", an international anthology of queer and trans writers published by Kith Books.  His next anthology, "Take it Outside" is due to be released February 2025 under his newly  launched small press, Incision Press. Orlando also teaches the LGBTIQA+ writing  program “Illuminated Ink” for Westwords, and was most recently a Guest Curator of the  Enqueer Writers Festival.

Phil Soliman is a writer, filmmaker, photographer, artist, and DJ, born and raised on Darug land  (Western Sydney) and currently based in Naarm (Melbourne). With a passion for storytelling across  all forms of creative expression that spans much of his life, Phil's work reflects his ongoing  fascination with the infinite and often wildly divergent ways we perceive reality.  Drawing from his migrant background and experience of neurodiversity, Phil’s work is not just a  means of artistic expression, but a way of navigating the complex and ever-changing world around  him.

Barry Lee Thompson (he/him) is the author of Broken Rules and Other Stories, published by  Transit Lounge and supported by Creative Victoria and a fellowship from Varuna, the National  Writers’ House. He has won competitions including the Overland Victoria University Short Story  Prize and the inaugural City of Melbourne Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards. His work has  been shortlisted and highly commended in events including the Queensland Literary Awards, The  Age Short Story Award, and the Bridport Prize. He enjoys membership of two writing groups.  Elwood Writers, which he co-founded in 2007, regularly contributes material to Vision Australia  Radio’s weekly literary program Cover to Cover. Barry is currently developing a novel exploring  the landscapes of the night – the project received early support from the Victorian Government’s  Sustaining Creative Workers Initiative.

https://barryleethompson.com/