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.

The five pieces we selected, from the anonymous entries, are representative of what’s crucial in nonfiction writing today: meticulous research, truth, and a resonance with wider experience.

I can’t wait to share them with you in the next issue of Island. My thanks to my fellow panellists, Lur Alghurabi and Rick Morton, for their marvellous insights as judges.

The shortlistees for this year’s Island Nonfiction Prize are: 

 Chris Fleming for Sudden, Temporary Deaths                                            

Emily Mowat for Wingsets and Snowdrifts: A Subantarctic Year         

Heather Taylor Johnson for Selfish Ghosts  

Jo Gardiner for The Long Daylight                                                                               

Suri Matondkar for Chaste    

The winner will be announced in July, and all five pieces will be published in Island 165, out early August.

In the meanwhile, you can read the 2021 shortlist and winning essay here.

Our thanks to the Copyright Agency's Cultural Fund for supporting this prize.