WHAT THE JUDGES SAID​

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• ​This essay feels fresh—in form, in theme, and in its linguistic fizz. I was hooked from the first graf, smiling at the image of a Bildungsroman as a wiggling mound of Jell-O. This piece has a graceful arc and tells a story, albeit in social-media-sized bites. - CP

• Gender angst told revealingly through the refuge of sharing on the internet, as websites emerge and wane  - SS

• This piece has so much hope and beauty. I was impressed by the command with which the writer chronicles how to navigate suffocating circumstances, find the courage to cope with adversity, and eventually grow from it. - WH

• Original in form, good blend of intelligent humour and anger - AA

• Deftly structured. Tightly told, holding both rage and lightness. Contained yet expansive, universal yet specific. A voice I'd like to hear more from. - SV

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WHAT THE JUDGES SAID

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• ​ It leaves the reader wanting to know more about these remarkable women. I adored the idea, the concise sentences and the flawless prose. -WH

• Captures love, real love, yet remains remarkably unsentimental. I would like to spend more time with these women. -SV

• A lovely homage to women across the generations.    -AA

 

 

WHAT THE JUDGES SAID

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• The writer uses themes of post-partum depression and existential climate crisis to show us flashes of what it means to try and comprehend things that are too big, too difficult, too painful and too desperate to look at face on. There's an uncomfortable honesty to it. -SV

• An important, timely essay. The writer skillfully tackles the themes of hope, grief and redemption and successfully addresses the challenges of motherhood and postpartum depression. -WH

• Though semi-elegiac, this piece pulses with life. In often vivid descriptive language, the writer forges an impressive braid of the existential and the domestic. What could have merely been an account of a fraying relationship becomes something more in her hands: a frantic search for meaning and wholeness in a collapsing world. -CP

WHAT THE JUDGES SAID

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• ​It’s hard to write well about home, cross-cultural wandering and a broken heart, mostly because so many writers have done so before. It’s especially impressive when an essay spears all three themes—and then some—without losing integrity.  Through carefully chosen visual and cultural details, and its elegant meditations on home as a repository for both memory and hope, this writer creates a subtle and complex essay. -CP

• An elegant, heartrending depiction of love, the gradual breakdown of a relationship and the loss of a home. The writer’s delicate use of sensory details makes it an excellent piece of writing; you can almost imagine the house she is reminiscing about. I liked this very much. -WH

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WHAT THE JUDGES SAID

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• Courageous, clear-eyed and inventive, this piece takes three disparate, vivid anecdotes that might seem specific to lead us to a larger truth, one which, at the very end, manages to be both surprising and cautiously optimistic. -CP

• Captures the pain of coming of age for a woman -SS

• A challenging subject handled intelligently. The voice is especially unforgettable in that it is sentimental and tender but always so charming.     -WH

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WHAT THE JUDGES SAID

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• ​Effective use of the second person. A profoundly humane work about how the pent-up rage of women is playing out after centuries of being wronged by society. -WH

• Some really original thinking and good turns of phrase which, with some focused honing, could be a truly brilliant piece. -SV

• Profound and filled with emotion -AA