Why do regional authors write short stories? They aren’t a great way to make money – but not all value can be measured in currency. Short stories are ideal for honing craft and learning the ropes of the publishing industry. They are also a powerful tool for preserving regional history.

For the last three years, the Community Publishing in Regional Australia group has been investigating regional publishing activity. The group collected 11 years of data from AustLit, which categorises written texts into 21 forms. Among the 8 most popular forms, it is novels, poetry and picture books that lead the charge. Notably, short stories make an impressive showing, ranging between 4.7% of regionally published material in NSW on the low end and as high as 7.86% of content published regionally in the ACT. The number of short stories in the data piqued my interest, and I started to question why regional writers were being drawn to the form. 

The group interviewed many regional writers during fieldwork trips. One of the interviewees from the Burdekin Shire was Megan Hippler. She shared that, ‘most of my writing is short form fiction, although I have done some poetry, some nonfiction. So, most of my publishing experience has been anthologies with other authors that other people have put together for me.’

Megan was a founding member of the Burdekin Creative Writers group in 2017 and spoke at length about her positive experiences with them. The group periodically brings in short pieces of writing inspired by a set theme, and then critiques each other’s work. As a result of this practice, Megan shared that, ‘over the months and the years we all accumulated dozens of stories and poems.’

Maintaining a consistent writing practice – either individually or as part of a group – is key to building a successful writing career. The best way to get better at writing is to write a lot, and it’s easier to write a dozen short stories than it is to write a dozen novels. Play with genre and voice, develop a wide range of characters and map out succinct plots. 

Short stories are also a way to learn the ropes of the publishing industry, which is notoriously difficult to enter for the uninitiated. Regional writers often have less access to networking opportunities than their urban counterparts. Digital opportunities like online publications, and competitions with open submissions for short stories, can be a great way to overcome this gap and get your name out there. Additionally, going through the submission process teaches aspiring writers valuable lessons: how to handle rejection, how the editing process can look and how to network yourself. 

Another interviewee was Jeff Close, a proud Winton resident of over 40 years. Jeff has been organising the Outback Writers Festival since its inception in 2016. This year is the festival’s tenth anniversary. Passionate about encouraging local stories and Australian outback publishing, Jeff has written a number of his own books. He also runs a small regional press with his wife, Bente, called Spur N Eight Publishing.

Jeff spoke proudly about the festival and its short story competition, saying that, ‘the power of seeing your own work in print is such that when we cooked this up nine years ago just about, I said I would like the best of the short story competition to go into a book and be printed.’

Submissions for the competition are open year-round, and winners are collected in The Outback: Anthology of Short Stories, which is sold at the festival. The chosen authors are all presented with a copy of the book. It can mean a lot to authors, especially emerging authors, to own a book with their work in it – something physical they can share with the people in their lives.

Jeff shared one ‘absolute success story’ that came out of his competition: Ken Sykes. Ken was a policeman from Western Queensland, born in Quilpie. Jeff encouraged him to write a short story for the competition, which later ended up going in the anthology. This gave Ken the motivation to get more of his work published, and Jeff helped him publish a novelette through Spur N Eight Books. Ken went on to get a complete novel published as well, Living in the Lucky Country, showing that small things can lead to big places.

A lot of regional publishing is collaborative, with community members coming together to support each other in their creative projects – knowing a friend of a friend who can proofread, and another that can typeset. Or local writers sharing tips about the best way to get books printed and distributed, and about how to market yourself. This neighbourly approach to publishing was a recurring theme in our interviews, and perhaps partly explains the amount of short story anthologies in our data – they are a necessarily collaborative form of publishing. 

It’s worth saying that not all regional writers are focussed on breaking into the industry and making it big. Another reason regional authors may gravitate towards short stories is that collections and anthologies are a great way to compile local stories – to preserve history for the next generation. As such, writing can be a form of community service. 

Mickey McKellar, another interviewee from the Burdekin, talked about her strong convictions about the power creative projects have to enrich communities. Mickey was for many years a member of Burdekin Readers and Writers Association and an organiser of the Ignite Your Mind Literary Festival. She is now happily stepping aside to let some new movers and shakers take the stage.

Micky shared her aspiration to gather local stories and make an anthology about the migrant history of the region: ‘Lots and lots of people who came here with nothing, raised their family… the men came first, and they’d left wives and children back in Italy, Greece, wherever, came out here and got themselves set up and then brought the wife. And there are some fantastic stories.’

The idea came out of Mickey visiting a local aged home to organise a book club, which led to the residents telling her about themselves and their pasts. She realised that a lot of important local history could be lost if the aging population passed without their lives being recorded, and that short stories may be the best way to do it. Regional decline is a significant issue, the Australian Bureau of Statistics recording the ongoing trend of younger generations moving to urban centres for education and employment. 

Mickey hopes that in the long-term creative projects like her planned anthology will not only work to record local history, but play a part in kickstarting a renewal in the region. Regional publishing has an important part to play in keeping regional Australia alive. And as Mickey herself imparted, ‘Australia can’t exist without regional areas.’

Community Publishing in Regional Australia is researching how regional Australians are using digital technology to publish and distribute books. If you’re interested in learning more,  subscribe to their Substack or follow them on Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky.