Essay Prize

ESSAY PRIZE COMPETITION 2012

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The Katherine Mansfield Society is pleased to announce its third annual prize essay competition, open to all, and which for 2012 will be on the subject of:

KATHERINE MANSFIELD AND THE FANTASTIC

This theme will investigate an unexpectedly rich vein within Mansfield’s modernist and experimental prose, e.g. literary gothic motifs and tropes including twinning, mirroring, ghosting and metamorphoses; her developments of fairytale; her exploration and expression / representation of the conscious and unconscious mind; the grotesque in KM; her work in relation to that of her contemporaries which reveal uses of the fantastic, haunting and the gothic; connections with later writers who also use the fantastic, mythic and literary gothic such as New Zealanders Keri Hulme, Janet Frame and Patricia Grace; KM and the Uncanny; KM and Postmodernism

The winner will receive a cash prize of £200 and the winning essay will be considered for publication in Katherine Mansfield Studies (the peer-reviewed journal of the Katherine Mansfield Society, published by Edinburgh University Press)

The distinguished panel of judges will comprise:

  • Professor Gina Wisker (Committee Member, Katherine Mansfield Society, Chair of the Judging Panel)
  • Professor Susan Sellers (Internationally acclaimed writer and author of Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women's Writing)
  • Dr Marie Mulvey-Roberts (Editor of The Handbook of the Gothic)

Essays in Word (.doc) format should be submitted by email attachment to Professor Gina Wisker: kms@katherinemansfieldsociety.org

by 1 February 2012.

 

ESSAY PRIZE COMPETITION 2011

The Katherine Mansfield Society is pleased to announce the name of the winner of its second international essay prize competition, on the theme of ‘Katherine Mansfield and the Arts’. The judges, Kirsty Gunn and Vincent O’Sullivan, chaired by Angela Smith, were unanimous in their view that one of the essays, written by a postgraduate student, was outstanding in the originality of its approach and in the subtlety of its expression.

The winner is Rebecca Bowler’s essay ‘“The beauty of your line – the life behind it”: Katherine Mansfield and the Double Impression’. It explores Katherine Mansfield’s attitude to the relation between what she called ‘life’ and work, the visual and the intellectual, emphasising doubleness in both Mansfield’s selves and in her aesthetics, a doubleness which led her to experiment with the literary Impression. Rebecca Bowler, a PhD student at the University of Sheffield, will receive a prize of NZ$ 420 (£200), and her essay will appear in the journal Katherine Mansfield Studies (Volume 3), to be published in October 2011 by Edinburgh University Press (sent free to all members of the Society).

ESSAY PRIZE COMPETITION 2010

The Katherine Mansfield Society is delighted to announce the results of its first annual international essay prize competition, which attracted a broad range of high quality entries on the subject of ‘Katherine Mansfield and D. H. Lawrence’. The judges – C. K. Stead and Andrew Harrison, chaired by Susan Reid – faced a difficult challenge since, as Reid explains, ‘It was impossible to select just one winner from this outstanding selection, so we have awarded a joint first prize, to two very different but equally engaging essays’.

The two winning entries are by Linda Lappin – on ‘A Parallel Quest’ for an authentic self, which led both writers through similar stages of exploration of ancient religions and philosophies – and by Kirsty Martin, on how Lawrence and Mansfield approached the difficulties of writing about happiness. The winners will each receive a prize of £150 and their essays will be published in the journal of Katherine Mansfield Studies (Volume 2), 2010, published by Edinburgh University Press. The judges have also commended as a close runner up, an entry by Elise Brault, which examines marginality in the poetry of Mansfield and Lawrence.

Gerri Kimber, Chair of the Katherine Mansfield Society, said that ‘the response to this essay competition is enormously encouraging for the growing field of Mansfield studies, demonstrating the quality of scholarship and opening up new lines of inquiry’. She also praised the efforts of Susan Reid, who has worked tirelessly on this project over the last year.