How to participate

Hello teachers and tutors!

Spineless Wonders is thrilled to be hosting the Phone It In competition for this year's #LitFest2444 as part of our #storybombing program.

As you will see from the information provided on the main page, we are inviting students to write, record and submit a short piece of microlit on the theme of SOUND to the Phone It In competition. 

Resources/Activities

To help students prepare their entries, we offer a range of resources in the student section which have been  prepared by our education officer, Alex Wegman. They are designed for students to work through independently but can also be adapted for classroom use. The activities range from examples of how other writers have responded to the theme of SOUND through to ideas for getting students writing their own microlit. We have published around forty microlit pieces (prose poems and microfiction) by new, emerging and established authors in our anthology, Shuffle, edited by Cassandra Atherton. Copies of Shuffle can be purchased directly from our website or via our distributor

Student Activities:

  1. Reading/listening to and thinking about microlit. (Activities 1 & 3)
    We have provided ten examples to download along with some questions to help students analyse the texts. We have also provided an audio version of each of the ten examples narrated by professional actors and some with accompanying soundscapes.
    Along with the written texts and prompt questions, these professionally-produced audio versions provide diverse ways for students to interact with these very layered and nuanced microlit pieces.
  2. Writing microlit. (Activities 2 & 4)
    These writing exercises give students a way to try out the micro-form before moving on to writing on the theme of SOUND.
  3. Writing sound-themed microlit. (Activity 5).
    This consists of a series of story-writing prompts to help students craft a winning submission for Phone It In.

Tips for recording an audio version of a text

We have asked professional voice artist and actor, Alex Neal, to make a video explaining how he goes about preparing for a voice recording of a text. He shares tips on how he prepares the text and his voice before a recording session and gives advice on how to make and upload an audio recording.

Promotional video

We have produced a simple video to encourage students to enter. Please feel free to share.


We hope these resources will assist students, whether individually or in small groups, to submit to Phone It In. And we encourage teachers to use the videos, texts and audio resources, with credit to Alex Wegman and Alex Neal, in your classrooms.

For any questions or suggestions, please contact Bronwyn Mehan at bronwyn[at]shortaustralianstories[dot] com [dot] au.