The judges – Amy Baillieu (Deputy Editor of ABR), Shannon Burns (critic and former ABR Fellow), and Beejay Silcox (critic and Artistic Director of the Canberra Writers Festival) – chose ‘why your hair is long & your stories short’ (ampersand and lower case correct!) from a field of 567 entries from twenty-eight countries.

The judges had this to say about the overall field: ‘We were delighted to encounter works that took unusual approaches to the form as well as those exploring unexpected subjects and offering uniquely personal observations. Among them were essays exploring the ethics of AI and the repercussions of war, reflections on loss, climate change, and family, musings on lesser-known aspects of history and thoughtful approaches to political and personal subjects. The shortlisted essays stood out from the field for their urgency, engaging writing, and innovative approaches to compelling topics. We thank everyone who entered the 2024 Calibre Essay Prize.’

Here is their comment on Tracey Slaughter’s mordant and loaded essay: ‘In Tracey Slaughter’s “why your hair is long & your stories short”, a beauty salon becomes a refracting point for the dark complexities of womanhood. In this “smalltown temple”, girlhood memories collide with adult realisations, and long-held secrets expose wilful silences. Written in snips and snippets – the literary equivalent of a haircut – this piece is as sharp as good scissors, as evocative as it is incisive. “Every mirror holds a story,” Slaughter writes. So does every barbed and perfect line of her Calibre Prize-winning essay.’

The winning essay appears on page 19. On learning of her win, Tracey Slaughter told Advances:

Venturing from fiction into personal essay territory has felt beset with risks, and I’ve often found myself back in places that have tested every nerve-end. Real stories raise the stakes in such a physical way. It feels as though the Calibre Essay Prize has come at the perfect time – to help quell those fears and to spur me on in my unfolding work on a collection of personal essays. I feel astounded and blessed and so utterly grateful to all who make this prize possible.

This year’s runner-up is ‘Hold Your Nerve’, by Melbourne writer Natasha Sholl. This fearless essay – not lightly undertaken or easily forgotten – concerns the brutality of childhood illness and the devastation that follows diagnosis. Natasha Sholl receives $3,000 from ABR. ‘Hold Your Nerve’ will appear in the June issue.

This year, the continuing generosity of ABR Patrons Peter McLennan and Mary-Ruth Sindrey has enabled us to create a third prize, worth $2,000. This prize goes to Canberra-based journalist Nicole Hasham. Her essay, ‘Bloodstone’, explores the many forms of loss left behind after decades of iron ore mining in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. It will appear in a later issue.

In addition to the three winning essays, eight others were shortlisted:

• Stuart Cooke (QLD) | Sounds of the Tip, or: learning to listen to the Oxley Creek Common
• Else Fitzgerald (NSW) | The Things We Don’t Say Live in My Body
• Chris Fleming (NSW) | Everything, Then Nothing, Just Like That
• Jeni Hunter (QLD) | Views from the Floodplain
• Sang-Hwa Lee (UK) | Looking Away
• Natasha Roberts (NSW) | Guide to losing your house in a bushfire
• David Sornig (Vic) | Os Sacrum
• Carrie Tiffany (Vic) | Seven snakes

We look forward to presenting Calibre for the nineteenth time in 2025.

ABR and AustLit

This issue features an article by the new director of AustLit, Associate Professor Maggie Nolan (see page 33). AustLit, an online bibliographical database of Australian storytelling, began life in the 1980s and now houses an extraordinary range of curated datasets, research projects, and teaching resources.

ABR and AustLit have recently entered into a partnership which will allow AustLit users who are ABR subscribers to seamlessly access ABR’s extensive archive of literary reviews, creatives works, and commentaries going back to 1978. Readers will benefit from the integration of datasets and the fabulous search capacities of AustLit.

Here, we are greatly assisted by our wonderful interns from the Faculty of Arts at Monash University, who are busily adding the links to AustLit’s impressive trove of ABR features.