David Unaipon Award is designed to foster emerging Indigenous voices and open up exciting career pathways for new writing talent.

This award is open to all unpublished Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers who have written manuscript in any genre. For the purposes of this award, unpublished means you haven’t published a full-length book. If you have published articles or stories or poems in magazines, online, or in journals you can still enter. The prize is designed to help you publish your first major work. Some writers may have had short pieces published but are still considered ‘unpublished’ for this award.

The winner receives prize money and a publishing contract with the category sponsor, University of Queensland Press (UQP).