The Sidney Prize is a literary prize given to the best work of short fiction in Australia. It is administered by Overland and the Malcolm Robertson Foundation. The winner receives $5000 in prize money and two runners-up are published by Overland. The winning entry is chosen from a longlist by judges Patrick Lenton, Alice Bishop and Sara Saleh. The judges and the Malcolm Robertson Foundation also award a special mention to a writer from a marginalised identity. This year, it was Annie Zhang’s story ‘Who Rattles the Night?’, about a couple who learns to live with ghosts in their new home.
Sidney Price is a pre-made Sim that appears in several trailers, renders and promotional screenshots for The Sims 4: High School Years. He lives in Copperdale, a world that shipped with the expansion pack. He is shown to be a member of the Cheerleading team and has Romance and Mess Around preferences for both men and women, indicating that he is bisexual. He is friends with Noah Kane, and he is seen to have a crush on Liam Beckett in one of the game’s trailers.
The Sydney Peace Prize honours “people who promote a philosophy of peace with justice and human rights”. It was founded in 2013 by the Black Lives Matter movement (founded in the US by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi after the acquittal of George Zimmerman) as part of a campaign to address violence against black people. The winner is honoured at the Sydney Film Festival in November each year with the signature mesmeric swirl award, designed and handmade in Sydney by Louise Olsen of Dinosaur Designs.
In addition to the Sydney Prize, the Hillman Foundation awards monthly Sidney Awards in the United States and Canada to investigative journalism that exposes social injustice and economic inequality. The foundation is a left-of-center organization that was established in 1946 by the president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, which was later folded into Unite Here and Workers United. Its leadership includes former union officials and left-leaning celebrities, such as Danny Glover.
In announcing this month’s winners, the Foundation praised the “delicate balancing act of courageous, risky journalism” being undertaken in these times of heightened fear and division. The September Sidney went to Sam Stein, who has been covering how sequestration is crippling federal programs ranging from the public defender system to social services and medical research. “It is a difficult time for journalists to be a voice of reason,” the Foundation said in a statement, but they must continue to pursue stories that serve the public interest. “Our democracy depends on it.” (c) 2024 Overland, an independent quarterly magazine for Australian writers and readers on the theme of travel, with funding from the Malcolm Robertson Foundation. The Overland Neilma Sidney short story competition is open to all writers who reside in Australia or are resident abroad, and submissions are judged anonymously. Submissions are made online, and the winning story will be published in Overland’s autumn issue 2024. Subscribers can enter the competition for a discounted rate.