We are delighted to announce the ten shortlisted essays in the inaugural KYD Creative Non-Fiction Essay Prize. Designed to celebrate and showcase the best and most inventive creative non-fiction, the prize attracted 245 entries from around Australia, across a broad range of topics and styles.

Judged by award-winning essayist Fiona Wright, the winner will receive $3,000 in prize money, donated by Kill Your Darlings; two runners up will each receive $1,000. All three winning essays will be published in KYD in early 2023.

Congratulations to the following shortlisted entrants:

‘The Constitution’ by Lucy Carozza (QLD)
A satirical, observational critique of Australian corporatism and how bureaucratic authoritarianism totalises life down to the mundane.

‘Five ways you can protect your house from smelling like shit for months’ by Ben Carter (QLD)
An essay reflecting on climate change, housing and colonial attitudes to land, through the lens of how to make a home flood safe.

‘Fragile, Unfinished Somethings’ by Darby Jones (QLD)
A lyric essay that weaves memoir, cultural criticism, biography, and autotheory to reflect on queer identity, mortality, and the passage of time.

‘Hungry Little DisHuman Beings’ by Caitlin McGregor (VIC)
An illustrated essay about changelings, autistic poetics and the relationship of disability to the category of ‘human being’.

‘The Mother Cake’ by Georgia Mill (VIC)
A reflection on the overlooked role of the placenta in pregnancy and birth, and our conception of where the body starts and ends.

‘Park’ by Adalya Nash Hussein (VIC)
A personal reflection on grieving a friend in private and in public, and the juxtaposition of digital and physical spaces.

‘Road Ecology’ by Connor Tomas O’Brien (VIC)
A reflection on the land beneath Australia’s road network, and how we have learned to understand roads as ecological ‘non-places’.

‘Naked Under Leather’ by Lucy Robin (VIC)
A personal and critical exploration of the queer implications and subcultures around motorcycles, as vehicles of alterity and freedom.

‘Deep Blue Void’ by Drew Rooke (NSW)
A personal reflection on the pleasure and terror of open water swimming, and how it can disrupt human exceptionalism.

‘Counterfeit and Creativity’ by Miriam Webster (VIC)
An essay on writing as work, inspired by Natalia Ginzburg’s ‘My Vocation’, combining memoir, reflection, review and lament.

 

Thanks to everyone who entered—and stay tuned for the winners’ announcement next week!