The Sudden Writing Prize 2026 Winner - Keeley Zappia
In 2026, Express Media worked with AAWP in judging the Sudden Writing Prize.
Below is the winning piece, ‘Walking across a sink hole and trying not to fall in’ by Keeley Zappia.
Walking across a sink hole and trying not to fall in
Keeley Zappia
Mama owns so many things. Her room is our black hole. Her room is the big fat elephant in another room you waltz around and whisper uh uh don’t go in there, wagging your finger and shaking your head. Her clothes on floorboards are roots you can’t pull from soil.
I try to help her sometimes. I fold good shirts into the dresser and stuff rotten ones into garbage bags. The thin plastic stretches and stretches like an amniotic sac til it rips and spills a flood of baby clothes and adult clothes and dead people clothes onto the floor clothes.
I lift up a black dress and it licks dust into my eye.
Mama looked so beautiful kneeling over dad in her lace. I hope she lets me wear that dress someday.
I pluck crumpled tissues and put papers into piles. My eyes blur after the first hour—things keep appearing and the room feels unending and destructive like bad days as a kid; rolling your ankle when you get to the ice-skating rink, watching the other kids gliding and you’re crying at the barricade waiting to be picked up. But I always went home and I always got ice cream and tucked into bed at the end .
—a car door closes.
Mama walks into the house and I scramble out of her black hole. She squalls hot I told yous and Not yours and Don’t need help—she pushes into her room and kicks bags—she tugs at her gold curls—wretches her lips in an M shape—she is looking at a spot in the air I can’t see that she finds sometimes and— her eyes twitch—and she’s looking around the hole place like what have you done but nothing too bad because you couldn’t see in here to begin with.
In our next life, I want to own nothing.
Mama, I’m taking us to a retreat and we’re shaving our heads skin to skin. We’re becoming monks. We’re going to be unbound, reaching nirvana all the time.
I want to own nothing, not even each other, Mama. I want to own nothing, even if someone dies. We could be leaping over his hole in the dirt in orange frocks, squealing when we thud on the other side, and all the fun games you play when your arms are empty.
Keeley Zappia is a twenty-one-year-old writer who lives in Melbourne. She recently graduated with a Bachelor of Media and Communication, majoring in Professional Writing and Editing. Since she was young, Keeley has been found with her head in a book or typing in an open Google Doc, reflecting on grief and love. She also enjoys secondhand shopping, travel, going to the park and drinking wine with friends—and writing about it all after.
Judges’ Report: From the first line, ‘Walking across a sink hole and trying not to fall in’ engaged us with its restrained yet expansive prose. Its pithy one-liners – such as ‘Mama looked so beautiful kneeling over dad in her lace. I hope she lets me wear that dress someday.’ and the repeated refrain of ‘In our next life, I want to own nothing.’ – drip with stark lyricism, bluntly depicting the brutal contradictions of generational grief and mother/daughter love, yearning to be unburdened of possessions while clinging to hope. It left us with a powerful sense of the emptiness it speaks to, both heartbreaking in its reality and unsentimental in affectation. ‘Walking across a sink hole and trying not to fall in’ has been selected as the winner of the 2026 AAWP & Express Media Sudden Writing Prize because it knows exactly the spiritual wasteland it wants to take us to and then goes there, without comfort or apology, with every well-placed word.
This year’s winners are:
First Place: ‘Walking across a sink hole and trying not to fall’ by Keeley Zappia
Second Place: ‘The Cold Sleep’ by Libby Broome
Third Place: ‘Dirt and Danube’ by Blue Jordan
Highly Commended:
‘Elegy For a Fig Wasp’ by Chloe Ho
‘My Father’s Hands’ by Nimrada Silva
‘My Name Means Soup in Chinese (But You Already Know)’ by Sophie Tong
Congratulations to these young writers!
