Winner of the 2022 Island Nonfiction Prize
I’m thrilled to announce the winner of the 2022 Island Nonfiction Prize: Heather Taylor Johnson’s ‘Selfish Ghosts’.
Nonfiction Prize 2022 Shortlist
We have once again been spoiled for choice! This year’s entrants to the Island Nonfiction Prize were in equal parts powerful, moving, funny, furious and sad, and choosing a shortlist from hundreds of submissions was quite a task.
Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize winners- 2021/22
Our thanks to everyone who supported this year's Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. We received in excess of 400 entries. The judging panel, comprising Island's poetry editor, Kate Middleton, Ali Alizadeh and Aidan Coleman, judged the competition ‘blind’. Each judge read all submissions, and then, over the course of discussion, came to the collective shortlist of five poems that make up the winner, runner-ups and highly commendeds.
Funding Announcement
On the same day that we go to press with our final issue for 2021, we are delighted to be able to announce that Arts Tasmania has awarded us an organisational grant for 2022. This grant gives us a strong foundation from which to pursue our 2022 planned program.
Island’s Inaugural Nonfiction Prize Winners
In the almost 300 entries we received were a whole range of experiences, communicated in every kind of nonfiction form. As judges, we were fortunate to have the opportunity to read pieces that were funny, devastating, profound, pithy, lyrical and hard. These entries ran the gamut of nonfiction, from traditional essay form to unapologetically experimental, and pure memoir to absolute universal exploration.
Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize winners - 2020/21
At a time when poetry is very much in the news (thanks to Amanda Gorman reciting her powerful poem at Joe Biden's inauguration), we are delighted to announce the winners of the 2020 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize.
Funding Update
We are delighted to announce that Arts Tasmania has awarded us an organisational grant for 2021. This grant provides us with a solid foundation from which we will pursue the additional revenue necessary to deliver our planned 2021 program.
Issue 159 out this month
We are always excited when we publish Island, but perhaps even more so with this next issue. After being unsuccessful in achieving a renewal of multi-year grant funding from Arts Tasmania, it seemed unlikely that the magazine would survive 2019, let alone 2020. But due to an anonymous private benefactor, a matched once-only government grant and some individual donors, we were able to start work on the 2020 publishing schedule (albeit reduced to two issues instead of the normal four). The global pandemic has certainly added some extra challenges, but here we are, about to publish issue 159, the first of our two 2020 issues!
Editorial Team for 2020 finalised
We are delighted to announce that we have finalised the structure of our editor team for 2020.
Update
The future of Island remains very uncertain. Following our unsuccessful application for multi-year funding in the most recent round, at the invitation of Arts Tasmania we have met to identify options for the magazine. These discussions are ongoing, but Arts Tasmania has ruled out the provision of an ad hoc grant.