Australia & New Zealand  – The Pacific Islands – Samoa

Please read these eligibility and entry rules before beginning the online entry process. Submission of an entry is taken as acceptance of the entry rules. For any entry or eligibility queries not covered below, please email entry@tusitalacompetition.com for clarification before submitting an entry.

Opening date: Sunday 08 November 2020

Closing date: Sunday 18 April 2021

Entries must be submitted via the online entry form by: Sunday 18 April 2021

No entries will be considered if submitted after this date.

1. About the competition

a. The Samoa Observer Tusitala Story competition offers annual awards for unpublished short fiction administered by the Samoa Observer.

b. The competition is a cultural initiative of the Samoa Observer.

c. The prize covers the Pacific regions of

• Australia/ New Zealand
• Pacific Islands
• Samoa

d. There will be three winners, one from each region. One regional winner will be selected as the overall winner. The overall winner of Tusitala receives USD $1000 and the remaining three regional winners USD $1000.

e. The final selection will be judged by an international judging panel.

2. Eligibility

a. Entrants must be living in the Pacific countries they have entered from – eg Australia or New Zealand, Samoa or these Pacific Island nations – American Samoa, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Hawaii, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Guam, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

b. For regional purposes, entries will be judged by country of citizenship. Where the writer has dual citizenship, the entry will be judged in the region where the writer is permanently resident.

c. Entrants must be aged 18 years or over.

d. All entries will be accepted at the discretion of the Samoa Observer management who will exercise their judgement in consultation with the chair as necessary, in ruling on questions of eligibility. The ruling of the chair on questions of eligibility is final, and no further correspondence will be entered into.

3. Entry rules

a. Entries must be made by the writer.

b. Entries will only be accepted via the online entry form (except for in Samoa).

c. The deadline for receipt of entries is Sunday 31 January 2021

d. Only one entry per writer may be submitted.

e. The story must be the entrant’s own work.

f. The story must be original and should not have been previously published anywhere in full or in part. Published work is taken to mean published in any printed, publicly accessible form, e.g. anthology, magazine, newspaper.

h. All entries must be in English.

i. Entries must not be more than 5,000 words.

j. Entries should be uploaded in a PDF document. Please save your document as a PDF and use the title of the story as the file name. Please note the story must not be saved as ‘Tusitala Story’, ‘Short Story’ or any other generic title. If it is not possible to save the entry as a PDF document, it may be uploaded as a Microsoft Word document, with the file name in the same format as above. The first page should include the name of the story and the number of words.

k. The author’s details should be included in the entry form. They must not be given anywhere on the uploaded document. All entries are judged anonymously.

l. All entries should be submitted in Arial 12 point font and double line spacing. All pages should be numbered and include a header with the title of the story.

m. There are no restrictions on setting, genre or theme.

n. The story should be adult fiction and must not have been written for children alone.

o. Entrants agree as a condition of entry that the Samoa Observer may publicise the fact that a story has been entered or shortlisted for the prize.

p. Worldwide copyright of each story remains with the writer. The Samoa Observer will have the unrestricted right to publish the winning stories (the overall winning story, the three regional stories and other highly commended stories) in an anthology and for promotional purposes.

q. The overall and regional winners will be expected to take part in publicity activities including social media where possible.

r. The overall and regional winners will be expected to undertake a mutually acceptable programme of regional outreach activities to develop and promote the Samoa Observer Tusitala Story competition.

4. Prize regions

Australia and New Zealand

The Pacific Islands -American Samoa, Fiji, Hawaii, Kiribati, Cook Islands, Nauru, Niue, Tokelau, Papua New Guinea,  Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.