Congratulations to UWA Publishing authors Kaya Ortiz and Shey Marque for having their poetry collections shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in the 2026 NSW Literary Awards. The award was judged by Rico Craig, Alison Croggon, Kate Middleton, Sara M Saleh, and Les Wicks. The prize is $30,000 and the winner of the award will be announced on 18 may 2026 at a ceremony.
From the judges:
PAST & PARALLEL LIVES by Kaya Ortiz
"A work that charts a terrain where identity, memory and belonging fold into one another, Past & Parallel Lives understands time not as a straight line but as a porous, haunted field. Each poem maps the delicate intersections between past selves and selves yet to be realised. Kaya Ortiz moves between histories and possible worlds with an exacting tenderness, allowing inheritance and imagination to speak without hierarchy.
What emerges is a collection deeply attuned to the ways lives are shaped not only by what is lived, but by what is withheld, deferred or only ever glimpsed sideways; Ortiz writes with restraint and emotional intelligence. The poems reach outward into larger questions of belonging, grief and memory, probing the architectures of the self with both tenderness and precision, leaving a luminous afterimage."
THE HUM HEARERS by Shey Marque
"The Hum Hearers is a vividly allusive collection that explores the hum of genetics and the legacy of trauma that flows through personal history. The poems bind the intellectual to the intimate, discovering bonds of solidarity with the past, and opening to a conclusion that is both haunting and uplifting. The collection moves through a series of prose vignettes that draw connections across the generations of women in Shey Marque’s lineage; poems search for a ‘list of instructions left behind by generations long one’ creating a poetic dialogue between past and present. In the final section, a series of intimate, observational poems focus on the loss of the poet’s mother. These poems combine with a remarkable free verse sequence and exploded sonnets that reach out into the cosmos searching for a hum that sustains."
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