The Speculate Prize builds on the longstanding partnership between the Emerging Writers Festival and RMIT's writing and publishing programs across Vocational Education, the undergraduate Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing) and postgraduate Master of Writing and Publishing.
L-R: 2026 Speculate Prize winner Bridie Noonan; RMIT Senior Lecturer, Writing & Publishing, Dr. Rose Michael; RMIT Program Manager, Master of Writing and Publishing, Associate Professor Tracy O'Shaughnessy; 2026 Emerging Writers Festival co-CEO Jes Layton; 2026 Speculate Prize Highly Commended recipient Alina Ivanova.
The Speculate Prize offers RMIT Writing and Publishing students a rare behind-the-scenes experience of literary prize judging. As readers and critics, students immerse themselves in the submitted works, engage in lively and rigorous discussion, and collaboratively shape a longlist for the prize's expert judges to refine into a shortlist and eventual winner. It's an opportunity to develop critical skills, champion emerging voices and play a meaningful role in the literary landscape.
The 2026 judges were acclaimed author and RMIT Senior Lecturer in Writing and Publishing Rose Michael, Emerging Writers' Festival Executive Director Jes Layton, and critic and bookseller Marina Sano.
In July 2026, Bridie Noonan was announced as the winner of The Speculate Prize for her work, The Inbetween. Her prize includes a seven-night residency at RMIT's iconic McCraith House on the Mornington Peninsula, $1,500 in prize money (including a residency stipend), a full pass to the 2026 Emerging Writers' Festival National Writers' Conference, and more.
The 2026 longlisted works will also find a lasting home in a special anthology published by Bowen Street Press, under the editorial oversight of Tracy O'Shaughnessy, RMIT's Program Director of the Master of Writing and Publishing.
Extending the prize's spirit of creative experimentation beyond the page, a free writing workshop at the 2026 Emerging Writers' Festival invited participants to explore the art of imagining the otherly. Supported by RMIT's Regenerative Futures Institute, the workshop was led by RMIT Senior Lecturer in Writing and Publishing and novelist Rose Michael, alongside novelist Romy Ash.
The Speculate Prize is a partnership between RMIT University and Emerging Writers' Festival.
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.
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