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Australian Short Story Collection - Steele Rudd Award
or University of Southern Queensland Australian Short Story Collection – Steele Rudd Award
Subcategory of Queensland Literary Awards
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History

The award title was changed to University of Southern Queensland Australian Short Story Collection – Steele Rudd Award in 2015.

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2021

winner y separately published work icon Ordinary Matter Laura Elvery , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2020 19629660 2020 selected work short story

'In 1895 Alfred Nobel rewrote his will and left his fortune made in dynamite and munitions to generations of thinkers. Since 1901 women have been honoured with Nobel Prizes for their scientific research twenty times, including Marie Curie twice.

'Spanning more than a century and ranging across the world, this inventive story collection is inspired by these women whose work has altered history and saved millions of lives. From a transformative visit to the Grand Canyon to a baby washing up on a Queensland beach, a climate protest during a Paris heatwave to Stockholm on the eve of the 1977 Nobel Prize ceremony, these stories interrogate the nature of inspiration and discovery, motherhood and sacrifice, illness and legacy. Sometimes the extraordinary pivots on the ordinary.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2020

winner y separately published work icon Lucky Ticket Joey Bui , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2019 17064005 2019 selected work short story

'IN the comic-tragic story ‘Lucky Ticket’, the narrator, a genial disabled old man, sells lottery tickets on a street corner in bustling Saigon. In ‘Mekong Love’, two young people in a restrictive society find a way to consummate their relationship—in an extraordinary tropical landscape.

'In ‘Abu Dhabi Gently’, a story of dreams and disappointment, of camaraderie and disillusionment, a migrant worker leaves Vietnam to earn money in the UAE in order to be able to marry his fiancée. ‘White Washed’ depicts a strained friendship between two students in Melbourne, the Vietnamese narrator and a white girl.

'What does it mean to be Asian? What does it mean to be white? And what makes up identity? In Lucky Ticket, Joey Bui introduces a diverse range of characters, all with distinctive voices, and makes us think differently about mixed-race relationships, difficulties between family generations, war, dislocation and identity.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2019

winner y separately published work icon Zebra and Other Stories Debra Adelaide , Sydney : Picador , 2019 15418348 2019 selected work short story

'A body buried in a suburban backyard.

'A suicide pact worthy of Chekhov.

'A love affair born in a bookshop.

'The last days of Bennelong.

'And a very strange gift for a most unusual Prime Minister...

'Tantalising, poignant, wry, and just a little fantastical, this subversive collection of short fiction - and one singular novella - from bestselling author Debra Adelaide reminds us what twists of fate may be lurking just beneath the surface of the everyday.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2018

winner y separately published work icon Pulse Points : Stories Jennifer Down , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2017 11679894 2017 selected work short story

'The characters in Jennifer Down’s Pulse Points live in small dusty towns, glittering exotic cities and slow droll suburbs; they are mourners, survivors and perpetrators. 

'In the award-winning ‘Aokigahara’, a young woman travels to the sea of trees in Japan to say goodbye. In ‘Coarsegold’, a woman conducts an illicit affair while her recovering girlfriend works the overnight motel shift in the middle of nowhere. In ‘Dogs’, Foggo runs an unruly gang of bored, cruel boys with a scent for fresh meat. In ‘Pressure Okay’ a middle-aged man goes to the theatre, gets a massage, remembers his departed wife, navigates the long game of grief with his adult daughter.' (Publication Summary)

Year: 2017

winner y separately published work icon The Circle and the Equator Kyra Giorgi , Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2017 9145964 2017 selected work short story

'In the dying days of the Russian Empire, a Scottish sound recordist disappears into the Caucasus mountains; a former hero of the Algerian resistance experiments with traditional Chinese medicine; a French anatomical artist models disfigured soldiers returned from the Crimea; in 1960s Poland, a grandmother hatches a plan when a Hollywood star comes to town; during the war in Vietnam, fate and superstition guide a Filipino cook toward a new vocation; in Weimar Berlin, a young man’s efforts to rehabilitate himself are derailed by a charismatic artist...

'Confronting, moving, and brilliantly original, Kyra Giorgi’s fascinating stories loop through time and place to delve into the lives of those caught at the articulation points of history. Deftly balancing the personal and the political with the historical and the medical, they explore the impact of conflict, the ethics of treatment and care, and the lengths to which we will go to preserve who we are.' (Publication summary)

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