Midsumma Festival 2025’s theme, COLLECTIVE IDENTITY(S), challenges us to explore how we foster connections in an era of digital disconnection, uniting communities and amplifying voices that advocate for meaningful social change.

from midsumma.org.au

Had such a lovely time at The Pearl Prize 2025 award ceremony at the Victorian Pride Centre in St Kilda on Sunday afternoon. The event, part of the Midsumma Festival program, was a welcome opportunity to celebrate art, storytelling, and community. Martha Ackroyd Curtis MC’d with beautiful authenticity. Jeanette Barry and Craig Brown read excerpts from their stories ‘Shadows of the Digital Dream’ and ‘RECALCULATION’ respectively. We heard from Midsumma’s Chief Executive, Karen Bryant. And there was music: three captivating violin solos played by Kat Tsyrlin, including an arrangement of ‘Your Song’ and an extract from ‘Spring’ from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

The theme for this year’s Pearl Prize: Queerness beyond the ML and AI in (A) ARTificial space.

The winner is Niko Satria for their story ‘The Bridge’, with Julien Furnace receiving second prize for ‘Dateshifter and the Still Life’. Congratulations to both, and to all the other shortlisted writers.

Osborne and Fawkner have produced a very good-looking anthology of the fifteen shortlisted stories: The Pearl Prize | An anthology of Queer writing from across Australia is available in both hard and soft covers from Hares & Hyenas. You can also buy direct from the publisher – hardback here, softback here. It’s such a thrill to be one of the fifteen authors included in the book – I can’t wait to read all the stories.

Thanks to my friends Jo, Margaret and Andrew and everyone who came along to St Kilda on Sunday. A special shout out to Margaret, who’s also a colleague at Elwood Writers, for putting me on to this exciting opportunity in the first place. She thought I’d find it interesting – it was right up my alley.