Tara June Winch is no stranger to writing competitions. In fact, it's what kickstarted her career.
At 19, after returning home from her travels in London, the Wiradjuri author spotted a call-out for the Queensland Young Writer's Award and wrote her first-ever short story. "I didn't win," she says over Zoom from her home in France. "I won second prize, which was just as good with me. And exactly 12 months later...I won the manuscript award at the same Queensland Literary Awards."
It turned out that one of the judges for the competition had passed on her short story to an editor at the University of Queensland Press. From there, she expanded her piece into the manuscript that would become her acclaimed 2006 novel, .
Winch, who is a judge for the 2021 , emphasises the importance of short-form writing as a way to hone one's craft.
"Potential writers think, 'My ambition is to write a 900-page novel. Why would I even consider the short story?' But this is your blueprint...You have this opportunity to test the water of the story. And to challenge yourself, even, to bring that idea into a couple of thousand words."
This year's SBS Emerging Writers' Competition asks writers 18 years and over to submit a first-person memoir piece, between 1,000-2,000 words, on the topic 'Between Two Worlds: stories from a diverse Australia'. The competition is open for entries from 16 August - 16 September 2021.
Wiradjuri writer Tara June Winch is a judge for the 2021 SBS Emerging Writers' Competition Source: Supplied
Along with a willingness and curiosity to play with form, Winch urges new writers to leap at opportunities, however farfetched they may seem. "That's how my career started."
Today, along with her mentors Tony Birch and Melissa Lucashenko, Winch occupies a crucial place in the canon of First Nations literature (Swallow the Air has been on the HSC syllabus since 2009).
In her own reading life, she credits Oodgeroo Noonuccal, the first Aboriginal female writer to be published, to be a key influence. "If there's a First Nations writer out there, who is looking for that voice of our literary ancestors that have come before...I would say to reach out to Noonuccal's work. Her poetry still remains some of the best in Australia."
If there's a First Nations writer out there, who is looking for that voice of our literary ancestors that have come before...I would say to reach out to Noonuccal's work. Her poetry still remains some of the best in Australia.
But the gift of storytelling has always been in her blood. Having grown up close to her father, who was a master storyteller around the family's backyard fire pit ("He knows where the joke ends, where to twist the knife," she laughs), the novelist in her soon learned to listen for the musicality of a good narrative.
"He'd go away to the bush when I was a kid to fruit-picking or to the cattle stations to get work, then come back home for months, and he always had stories."
There was always a moment, in those precious nights, when her father would pause in the middle of a story, tilting his head and slowly breathing into the kindling. In those suspended seconds, nobody spoke. And as the flame grew, magic coalesced around Winch.
This, she says, is how it feels when the right words fall into place.
"When you read your story aloud, when you edit and read it again and again - your work becomes the fire pit reflected in your eyes."
Winch is currently in the midst of that process, finishing her new novel, Hotel Vague, a psychological thriller which explores Nietzsche's idea of eternal return. It's summertime in France, and she is ready to bunker down while everyone gears up for holidays around her.
"I'll be looking out the window seeing everybody sunbaking and playing and all sorts of good stuff," she laughs.
But for now, life is abuzz in her countryside home. In the attic where she works, a crop of silvery balloons lurk behind her. Winch jokes that they are her "everyday balloons" - a Seinfeld reference - before explaining it is her teen's high school graduation party that evening.
"We're having a big blow-out bonfire, [turning] the music up, that sort of thing."
There has been much to celebrate in the past year. In 2020, Winch's novel The Yield won the Prime Minister's Award for Literature, the Miles Franklin Award, and took out a triumvirate of honours (Book of the Year, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and People's Choice Award at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards).
These accolades are all the more remarkable given The Yield was 10 years in the making - a decade marked by juggling public anticipation and the internal pressure to create. In the end, it was a serendipitous brief from a literary magazine that reignited the project.
"In 2016, I was asked by Westerly Magazine to submit something for an edition. I'd been so obsessed with writing The Yield in a solitary way. I didn't actually have a contract for it, and I wasn't talking to anyone about it at that point. So when Westerly offered a modest fee, I thought, 'Let's try and contain this into a 5000 word story.'"
The result was a short story version of her novel, which won her an overwhelming response from readers and attracted the attention of a publisher.
"Without having put those 5000 words out there, without ever having taken that risk, I could still be...obsessing and tinkering away on The Yield," says Winch.
Don't think you have to put so many beautiful words onto one piece of paper. Spread them out.
Was there anything Winch wished she had known at 19 that she knows now?
"Don't think you have to put so many beautiful words onto one piece of paper. Spread them out," she says, "Have one moment and one entire page that gets you, yourself, in the guts."
Above all, Winch believes that good writing isn't just the sum of one's technical prowess, but "the craft of being an expert in the human heart.
"It's a lifelong job, but we're all experts on the human heart. That's the point of our lives - to understand and be understood," she says.
"[It's the] true connection with another human being in our life. With our mother, with our husband, our wife, with our children. You just apply that to writing, to characters, and to the way your characters interact."
SBS wants to hear your story...because there's a writer in all of us. Submit your story of 1000-2000 words that speaks to the beauty and/or challenges of being Between Two Worlds in diverse Australia and you could win up to $5000 and kickstart your career. Entries are open from August 16-September 16. Go to for more information and register to enter.
Listen to Tara June Winch on SBS Voices' new podcast, The New Writer’s Room, in the , , , , or wherever you listen to podcasts.
