This year The joanne burns Award will be run in conjunction with FLASHING THE SQUARE. Established in 2013, FLASHING THE SQUARE will present short literary works on the vast screen at Federation Square during the Melbourne Writers Festival. (Find out more about Flashing the Square 2013 at www.flashingthesquare.wordpress.com.)

The Spineless Wonders team will join FLASHING THE SQUARE project coordinator, Richard Holt and Literary Minded blogger, Angela Meyer in a nation-wide search for the best writing in microfiction/ prose poem forms.

Work by the winner of the 2014 joanne burns Award, shortlisted and invited writers will be published the Spineless Wonders' prose poem/microfiction anthology, Flashing the Square.

A small number of these works will go on to be produced as videos to be screened at Federation Square during the Melbourne Writers Festival (August 21-31).

What are we looking for?

We want screen-sized literature that will stop the festival-goers and Fed Square passers-by in their tracks. How you do it, is up to you. Play with story, play with language. Give us writing that has the conciseness of poetry. Give us the breezy vernacular of the prose poem.  Lace your microfiction with metafiction. Let your prose pull its punchlines. Give us language that is fresh and brimful of suggestion and nuance.

First prize will be $300, and all entries will be considered for publication in the Spineless Wonders prose poem/microfiction anthology.

To be judged by Richard Holt and Angela Meyer.