The sidney prize is a monthly award for investigative journalism in service of the common good. The Foundation seeks to honor those journalists whose reporting exposes social and economic injustice, draws attention to the need for change, and leads to meaningful policy change. The prize is named in honor of Sidney Altman, who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Thomas R. Cech for their discovery that RNA, previously thought to be simply a carrier of genetic codes between parts of the cell, actually aids and speeds up vital chemical reactions within living cells.
Each month, the Sidney Prize committee chooses a winning journalist from among the submissions. The journalist is notified in early spring and their work will be featured in Overland. During the year, the committee also selects winners for the Judith Wright Poetry Prize and the Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize. The prizes are awarded in a variety of categories based on genre and subject matter, and the prize amounts increase with the size of the category.
The prize committee also includes in its consideration of individual pieces those writers who have a particular connection to the issue or problem that is being addressed. This may involve being of a particular age, ethnicity or sexuality, or it may mean that the writer is from the community affected by the article. The writer’s identity will not be revealed to the judges, but a note to that effect will be included in the editorial summary of each piece that is considered for the prize.
Applicants should submit their manuscript by email to the editor of Overland. The submission should be no more than 6,000 words in length. Manuscripts should be double-spaced with 12-point font, and the author’s name must not appear on the manuscript. Each entry must be accompanied by a fee, which is $20 for non-subscribers and $12 for Overland subscribers. Multiple entries are acceptable, although each must be entered separately in the submission system and accompanied by the appropriate fee.
The winner of the 2023 Judith Wright Poetry Prize is Sydney poet, bookseller and co-founder of Vre Books Ender Baskan for his poem ‘are you ready?’, a ‘rallying cry for artists and writers to make something dangerous and start an artists and writers league as a radical alternative to precarity and professionalisation’. The runner up was Gareth Morgan for his poem ‘the national debt’. Saraid Taylor won the $5000 Neilma Sidney short story prize for her story ‘the labeller’.