Omega Writers Update | Introducing the 2020 CALEB Award

Last year, I announced the proposed schedule for the CALEB Awards—a plan for how the awards would run in the future. Well, we all know what they say about the best-laid plans ...

The current COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns and international travel restrictions have changed many plans, including the following Omega events:

• The South Australia Omega Writers Day on 2 May has been cancelled.
• The 2020 Omega Writers Conference has been postponed until 2021.

Omega Writers Conference

The 2021 Omega Writers Conference details are:

8-10 October 2021, at Peppers Kingscliff, New South Wales

All the speakers have confirmed their availability for 2021, and the venue has kindly agreed to hold our agreed prices for next year.

The conference traditionally hosts two events: the Annual General Meeting, and the CALEB Awards presentation night. The 2020 AGM will be held in October via Zoom, and members will receive an email with the details closer to the time.

2020 CALEB Award

One of the decisions from the 2019 AGM was to move from an annual conference to holding a conference every second year. The Omega Committee discussed how this would affect the CALEB Awards, and decided to rearrange the awards to cover Published books in conference years, and Unpublished manuscripts in the non-conference years.

But postponing the 2020 conference for a year has forced a rethink, which is why the 2020 CALEB Awards did not open for entries as originally promised on 1 April. The Omega Committee discussed this at their last meeting, and have decided to move to the rearranged scheduled from this year.

On that note, I am delighted to announce the 2020 CALEB Awards are open for entries for unpublished manuscripts in the following categories:

• Adult Fiction (any genre)
• Young Adult Fiction (any genre)
• Adult Nonfiction (any genre)

Who Can Enter?

The CALEB Award is open to Australian and New Zealand Christian writers. It costs AUD 40 per entry for members of Omega Writers, and AUD 70 for nonmembers. Members, you will receive an email advising you of the discount code.

This is an Unpublished contest, so is only open to those who have not previously been published in any form, whether hardcover, paperback, or ebook.

Entries in the fiction categories are limited to those who are not published in book-length fiction (i.e. fiction over 10,000 words).

Nonfiction entries are limited to those who are not published in book-length nonfiction (i.e. nonfiction over 10,000 words).

Entries are open from 20 April to 20 May.

Click here to read the Unpublished Award rules and formatting guidelines.

Click here to enter.

This change in dates will shift the judging dates, but we anticipate still announcing the winners in mid to late October, and we are planning a virtual awards ceremony via Zoom. That (unfortunately) means no chocolate, but we still want to celebrate and encourage Christian writers in Australia and New Zealand.

The winner in each category will receive editing services to the value of AUD 400 from one of our sponsors:

• Adult Fiction: Nola and Tim Passmore, The Write Flourish
• Young Adult Fiction: Iola Goulton, Christian Editing Services
• Adult Nonfiction: Cecily Patterson, The Red Lounge for Writers

Judging Opportunities

However, in order to run the CALEB Awards, we need judges. You don't need any particular qualifications to judge, and you can judge any category you haven't entered (so if you enter Adult Fiction, we'd love to have you as a judge for Young Adult Fiction or Adult Nonfiction).

Click here to sign up as a judge.

If you have questions, please ask in the comments.