Winner of the 2023 Island Nonfiction Prize

We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2023 Island Nonfiction Prize is Indigo Bailey for 'Rain Rain.'

Recently graduating from the University of Tasmania, Indigo lives, writes, and draws near kunanyi/Mt Wellington. Indigo's writing has previously been published by First Word Journal and Senses of Cinema, and she is a current participant in Express Media's Toolkits: Nonfiction mentorship program.

You'll be able to read the winning and shortlisted pieces in Island 168, out late July.  In the meantime, you can subscribe or order your issue in advance here. You can also enjoy reading the 2022 winning pieces in Island 165 and online and the inaugural Prize winners in Island 162 and online. 

Judges’ Report

I didn’t know quite what we were looking for in this year’s prize. We started in 2021, deep in pandemic panic, when many of us could only think of one thing and imagine one kind of future. This year, we have a smorgasbord of options when it comes to being furious, agitated or – less obviously – optimistic. In last year’s judges’ report, I wrote about the many other critical issues we had to cover, from climate change and deforestation to war and displacement.

What we didn’t see was a search for comfort. In the 2023 entries, a strong theme emerged of compounding tiredness, accompanied by a need to find a place to rest, whether literal or figurative. Weariness makes it hard to act but writing can be both momentum and a balm, if executed well.

This year’s winner, “Rain Rain” by Tasmanian writer Indigo Bailey, does this exactly. It’s a hunger for peace – Bailey starts out by uses rain sound generators as a soothing mechanism – but it’s also a smart, multimodal analysis of how it works. Why is that “rain on a tin roof” ambience so reassuring? Why do we yearn for the mundane? They’re questions close to my heart: I also use rain sounds as a way to drown out thoughts of the impending global devastation to catch a few hours of sleep.

“This is the summer when fires rage across the Bass Strait,” she writes. “Your dad raps the water tank with his knuckles and it’s a husk. And, in your room, it rains.

Extraordinary writers and critics Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen and Fiona Wright were my fellow judges for this year’s prize, and I’m grateful for their incisive thoughts about the many gorgeous entries we were lucky to read. While Bailey’s essay stood out as our unanimous winner, we’re thrilled with the shortlist and I’m proud to publish it in its entirety.

Alongside “Rain Rain” in this issue, you’ll find “Clothing the Whiteness”, Isabella Wang’s contrasting of her mother’s aspirations for high fashion and the lives destroyed by fashion supply chains, drawing on her own heritage and her mother’s immigrant experiences. “Collection of Collections”, by Meredith Jelbart, is a lush journey through rooms and rooms of curiosities, and a reflection on what they give to us as humans with a need to find meaning. In “The Other Hand”, Carly Stone fearlessly tackles poetic fragmentation to look for love, or something like it. And “We Were Here” is our first graphic shortlistee, with Sarah Firth’s incredible art sitting in conversation with Jelbart, in a beautiful attempt to figure out what our stuff means: “Photography convers the whole world into a cemetery.”

I hope you find these pieces as remarkable as we did. Every year I think I know what to expect from the entries, and every year I am bewildered in the best way.

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