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’.

Island Nonfiction Prize 2022 - Judges’ Report

 In my time as Nonfiction Editor and as a teacher, I’ve learned that reading nonfiction submissions offers a wonderful, surprising and often confronting insight into what’s on the public’s mind. The inaugural Island Nonfiction Prize, won by Megan Clement, drew entries on a certain theme. As you might expect, at the peak of a pandemic, writers were concerned with family connection, inequality, death and displacement.

This year’s submissions were quite different. Although Covid is far from over (wear a mask!), the urgency of the conversation seems to have shifted. Living in a pandemic is, according to these entries, no longer so novel (no pun intended) as to warrant its own essays.

Which is just as well, because don’t we have some other critical issues to cover? In 2022, we had a clear theme of destablisation. Many of these stories were told through a personal lens – an experience of climate change, displacement, unrest, hatred, fear – but they largely spoke to a world in broad turmoil. Writers are furious, demanding change in increasingly strong voices. It was both enriching and confronting to read these entries.

The wonderful Lur Alghurabi and Rick Morton brought their own generosity to the judging process. We struggled to narrow this list from hundreds of entries, and, look, we had some tiny judge fights. The quality of the work being submitted was extraordinary, and I’m grateful to everyone who sent in their words.

Shortlisted this year were four exceptional essays, wide-ranging in their style and subject. Chris Fleming explores mental illness in the best way – with humour and openness – in ‘Sudden, Temporary Deaths’. In ‘Chaste’, Suri Matondkar charges furiously through the impact of culture on sexuality and desire. We have Emily Mowat’s report ‘Wingsets and Snowdrifts’, from her time as a field biologist on subantarctic Macquarie Island, accompanied by her striking photography. And Jo Gardiner will break your heart wide open with ‘The Long Daylight’, a poetic reflection on loss.

I’m overjoyed with our winning piece, by Heather Taylor-Johnson. ‘Selfish Ghosts’ felt incredibly timely to me, and in a meta way I’m probably about to do exactly what it critiques, which is to impose ourselves on the art that sustains us. Part criticism, part personal essay, this stunning work considers the consumer as a selfish ghost, taking and taking from the output of others to soothe and satisfy our own discomfort. Taylor-Johnson writes, ‘Possibly I’ve completely missed the point of art. I don’t sit with it as if it were a mountain but as if it were a mirror.’ In this winning essay, she invites us to do the same.

I hope you love these pieces as much as we did. Thank you, once again, to all who backed themselves and entered – I wish you so much success and joy in your writing.

With gratitude to the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund for supporting this prize. 

You can read the winning and shortlisted pieces in Island 165 and online. You can also read last year’s winning pieces in Island 162 and online.