The Sydney Prize is a monthly award for outstanding journalism that focuses on social and economic injustice. The winner receives a $500 honorarium and a certificate designed by New Yorker cartoonist Edward Sorel. Nominations can be made for any piece of journalism published in the previous month—a feature article, an op-ed, a blog post, or even a tweet. The winner is announced on the second Wednesday of each month.

The Sidney Prize is named in memory of Dartmouth College professor Sidney Cox, who inspired students to pursue their creative passions. In addition to writing, he also taught painting and sculpture. A number of prizes and professorships have been established in his honor at Hamilton, Harvard Business School, and other schools.

In 2024, the Event Cinemas Rising Talent Award – presented by the Sydney Film Festival – recognised a trailblazing NSW-based creative working in short film. The $7,000 prize was awarded to a director, screenwriter or producer who had produced no more than five short films in their career. This is the second year the prize has been offered and it continues to recognise innovative, imaginative and courageous works.

Each year, the Hillman Foundation awards a monetary prize to two writers whose work “exposes social and economic injustice.” The foundation is affiliated with the left-of-center Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America union and its successors, Unite Here and Workers United, SEIU. The foundation is chaired by former Amalgamated Clothing Workers president and union activist Bruce Raynor, who has himself been in the midst of controversy in two different cases.

For the 2024 Hillman Prize, judges selected the Canadian Globe and Mail journalists Robert Fife and Steven Chase for their reporting on foreign interference in Canada’s democracy. Their investigation sparked national debate, dominated the news agenda and led to a public inquiry.

The Annual Sidney Edelstein Prize, sponsored by SHOT, is awarded to an outstanding scholarly book on the history of technology published in the previous three years. The prize was established in 1968 to commemorate the late Dr. Sidney Edelstein, a prominent dyestuffs manufacturer and an early pioneer in the history of technology.

The finalists for the 2023 Sidney Prize were announced today, and Overland will publish the winning story in our autumn issue. Runners-up will also be published online. We’d like to thank the judges, the entrants and our supporters for this year’s competition. This year, the prize received a record number of entries from across Australia and internationally. You can see all the finalist stories here. We would like to especially congratulate the following writers for their work: