Judges 2026

JC Niala is a multi-award-winning writer and storyteller whose work spans fiction, theatre, film, poetry and nature writing. Her novel A Town Like Me was longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition and the Stockholm First Five Pages Prize.
Her films Something Necessary and Wazi? FM have screened at international festivals including Toronto and Rotterdam, with Wazi? FM winning the Golden Dhow for Best Picture at the Zanzibar International Film Festival. She is also a widely anthologised nature writer and the author of The New Eden: Wildlife in the City and Discovering Our Shared Home. Her nature memoir A Loveliness of Ladybirds will be published by Little Toller in 2027.
Across genres, she is drawn to precise, surprising storytelling, distinctive voices and writing that opens up larger questions about how we live.

Amanda O’Callaghan

Amanda O’Callaghan is an Irish/Australian writer. Her fiction has been awarded and
shortlisted in multiple contests including the Bath Flash Fiction Award, Flash 500, Fish
Flash Fiction Prize, and the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize. Her short story collection, This
Taste for Silence, was shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, and
longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize in the UK. She lives in Brisbane.
www.amandaocallaghan.com