Sidney Prize is a national award named for a Dartmouth College professor whose passion and encouragement inspired students to realize their dreams. It honors whoever exhibits promise across three endeavors: scholarship, undergraduate teaching, and leadership for liberal arts education. The winner is honored at Phi Beta Kappa’s triennial Council meeting.

The Sydney Prize is awarded to the student whose honors thesis and overall work best explores feelings through language. This honor, deliberated upon by the English faculty, was established in the name of the late Sidney Cox to perpetuate in some small way the generative influence that he exerted on hundreds of students both in and out of class.

Since its founding in 1596, Sidney has had an enormous impact on the British nation — producing soldiers, political cartoonists, alchemists, spies, murderers, ghosts, university presidents, a 1928 Grand National winner, and, most recently, bestselling authors, a renowned media personality, film and opera directors, a Premiership football club chairman, a top business leader and one of the world’s foremost scientists.

But it’s also produced a lot of people who have made the world a better place in less conventional ways – by helping others find their own voices, or by educating and inspiring young minds. That’s why, on behalf of the City of Sydney, Lord Mayor Clover Moore is delighted to present this year’s Sydney Prize to Nazanin Boniadi, a tireless campaigner for women’s rights and human rights in Iran.

Overland’s Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize is open to all Overland readers and subscribers, and the competition is judged blind. The winning entry will be published in Overland and receive a cash prize of $5,000, as well as two runners-up awards.

The monthly SS Sydney Journalism Prize honors investigative journalism that benefits the common good. It is open to journalists in the fields of daily press, periodical and labor press, magazine journalism (longform; print or online), photojournalism, and opinion and analysis journalism. Self-nominations are encouraged.

The Sydney Peace Prize is awarded to individuals and organisations that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to the promotion of international peace and understanding. The Peace Prize is presented to a person or group who has made an important contribution in the field of peace and who is willing to work together with others in order to promote peace and tolerance and to encourage people of all backgrounds to understand each other. The Sydney Peace Prize was established in 1988 and is supported by the SS Sydney Trust. The Trust is a charitable trust with the objective of furthering the educational and cultural interests of New South Wales. The Trust has been working to support Australians involved in peace and conflict mediation for over 30 years. In addition to the Peace Prize, the Trust has also awarded the SS Sydney Literary Awards. These recognise contributions to the Australian literary scene in the areas of fiction, poetry and non-fiction, including biography and memoir. In the past, the Literary Awards have also included the SS Sydney Drama Prize.