Nature Writing Prize winner announcement

Bridget Webster is the winner of the Nature Writing Prize for her piece “Like All Good Fruit.”

Island’s Editorial Manager and lead judge, Jane Rawson, said “The three pieces that made it to the shortlist each provided a new way to look at and understand nature, written in a style that stretched convention.

Frankey Chung-Kok-Lun’s Menura novaehollandiae asks how we record the things we value, reflecting on the deep history of lyrebird mimicry and the unwritten language of his grandparents. Rosalee Kiely’s Habitat applies the naturalist’s keen eye to the landscape of the kitchen table and the fauna of children.”

Bridget’s work stood out to the judges for its remarkable and memorable perspective. Her short fiction evokes both the beauty and horror, the transcendental wonder, of death and decay, as a bushwalker goes missing and a search party tracks her down. Through its representation of humans as part of nature and its poetic depiction of a body returning to the earth, Webster’s story offers a striking and deeply affecting view of the natural world."

Bridget’s winning piece will be published in Island 176, due out in December, and Frankey’s and Rosalee’s works will be published on Island Online next month.