To coincide with UWA Publishing’s 90th anniversary in 2025, UWA Publishing is proud to announce the establishment of The Spiers Prize.
The award has been made possible by Gail Spiers’ generous endowment to UWA Publishing and will run as an annual award open to Australian writers of middle grade and young adult fiction.
Gail Spiers became enamoured with children’s literature during her studies in Reading Education as a mature age student. Thereafter, the promotion of quality Australian children’s literature and their creators became the focus of her career as a primary school teacher and her life, as a decades-long volunteer with the Children’s Book Council of Australia WA Branch. UWA Publishing is proud to be establishing The Spiers Prize in honour of Gail Spiers’ support and love for children’s fiction. Spiers says, “it’s a great thrill to be able to support talented authors of middle grade and young adult fiction into the future through The Spiers Prize.”
Photograph of Gail Spiers credit The University of Western Australia
The Spiers Prize will be awarded annually to an unpublished manuscript, between 25,000 to 80,000 words, written for a readership of 8+ and suitable for the formats of middle grade fiction or young adult fiction. The winner will be offered a publishing contract with UWA Publishing and a cash prize of $5,000. The award will be open for entry annually in the month of May. UWA Publishing is also excited to announce the inaugural judges for the prize: Gail Spiers, Kate Pickard, Sally Murphy OAM and Danielle Binks.
Kate Pickard is the publishing manager of UWA Publishing and has worked in the Australian publishing industry for over 25 years including 17 years at UWA Publishing. She is thrilled that through Gail Spiers’ generous gift UWA Publishing will have the chance to champion talented children’s writers well into the future.
Sally Murphy OAM is a children’s author, poet and academic. She has had over fifty trade and educational books published in Australia and overseas, including the award-winning verse novels Pearl Verses the World and Worse Things. An experienced educator, Sally is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Curtin University. Her research interests include creative practice, children’s literature, and the importance of pleasure in both reading and writing education. In 2022 she was awarded a Medal in the Order of Australia (OAM) for her services to children’s literature and education. Murphy is happy to be judging an award which will create the opportunity for new voices to be heard and looks forward to reading the entries.
Danielle Binks is a Melbourne-based writer and literary agent with Jacinta di Mase Management. She is the author of bestselling middle-grade book The Year the Maps Changed, and the award-winning young adult books; Begin, End, Begin: A #LoveOzYA Anthology as well as The Monster of Her Age. Her latest middle grade novel is Six Summers of Tash and Leopold. Danielle also teaches Fiction & Young Adult Writing in the Associate Degree of Professional Writing and Editing at her alum, RMIT University. She is “so excited and delighted to be part of any publishing initiative in this country that puts more of a spotlight on youth literature, and creates more avenues for new and emerging authors to write for these readerships.”
Submissions for the Prize will open at 10am AWST 1 May 2025 and will close at 11.59pm AWST 31 May 2025. More information, including the terms and conditions, can be found here.
For media enquiries please contact UWA Publishing’s Marketing Department.
EMAIL: marketing-uwap@uwa.edu.au
PHONE: (+ 61 8) 6488 3670