Island Nonfiction Prize 2024 shortlist announcement
We were once again overwhelmed by the quality of both the writing and ideas in the submissions we received for this year’s Island Nonfiction prize. Our thanks to everyone who took the time to develop, write and submit essays for the prize.
This year’s judges were Island’s Nonfiction Editor Keely Jobe, along with Erin Riley and Daniel Nour. The works were judged ‘blind’, and the judges have created a shortlist of five, before selecting the winning essay.
The shortlisted essays (in alphabetical order by author's surname) are:
‘A Story-Shaped Life’ by Gan Ainm
‘Writing Task 1’ by Suri Matondkar
‘seeing Ningaloo’ by Jenny Sinclair
‘The Breath Goes Now’ by Jessica White
‘Fucking with Chineseness’ by Cherry Zheng
Keely said of the shortlist ‘It has been a real privilege to judge this year’s prize. We were really struck by the breadth and diversity of talent, and landing on a shortlist felt from the beginning like an impossible task. After some tough decisions, we have selected five pieces that demonstrate unique or compelling approaches to storytelling, to form, to language and description, and to depictions of time, place and subjectivity. The voices are variously quizzical, critical, hilarious and anguished. Most importantly, every one of these stories shows great courage, vulnerability and generosity in the telling.’
The winning essay will be announced early next month, and all five pieces will be published in Island 171, out late July. In the meantime you can read the 2023 winning essays in Island 168, and previous years’ via Island Online.
About the authors
Gan Ainm
Gan Ainm is a writer born, raised and living in Lutruwita/Tasmania, currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Tasmania.
Suri Matondkar
Suri is a recipient of the Wheeler Centre’s 2024 Hot Desk Fellowship, and her work has been shortlisted for the 2022 Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing, the 2022 Island Nonfiction Prize and the 2022 Catalyse Nonfiction Prize. She is grateful for the chance to live and overthink on unceded Wurundjeri land where she obsesses over Taylor Swift’s lyrics and carefully avoids phone calls.
Jenny Sinclair
Jenny lives and works on Wurundjeri and Dja Dja Wurrung land.
She was joint winner of the 2019 Nature Conservancy Nature Writing Prize, and shortlisted in 2021. Her non-fiction books are Much Ado About Melbourne and A Walking Shadow. Her nonfiction and fiction have appeared in Island, Griffith Review, Meanjin, Best Australian Stories, The Age and on ABC radio.
Jessica White
Jessica is the author of the novels A Curious Intimacy and Entitlement, and a hybrid memoir about deafness, Hearing Maud, which won the 2020 Michael Crouch Award for a debut work of biography and was shortlisted for four national awards. Her essay collection, Silence is my Habitat: Ecobiographical Essays, will be published by Upswell in 2025.
Cherry Zheng
Cherry (she/they) is a writer of Cantonese heritage. She was a university medallist at the ANU and a New Colombo Plan Scholar in Beijing, Taipei and Singapore. Cherry recently completed the StoryCasters 2.0 mentorship and has appeared in Overland and the BSFA’s Fission science fiction anthology (forthcoming). A member of Worship Queer Collective and ANTRA, they pole dance under the stage name Cherry Chopstick.