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Australian Book Review

Calibre essay prize.

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A prize of $5,000 AUD (approximately $3,262) is given annually for an essay. Two second-place prizes of $2,500 AUD (approximately $1,631) each will also be awarded. The winners will be published in Australian Book Review . Using only the online submission system, submit an essay of 2,000 to 5,000 words with an entry fee of $25 AUD (approximately $16) by January 15, 2024. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Australian Book Review , Calibre Essay Prize, Studio 2, 207 City Road, Southbank, VIC 3006, Australia.

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A conversation with Dr Theodore Ell - 2021 Calibre Essay Prize Winner

Presented by ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences

The Australian National University  and  Australian Book Review  invite you to an evening with Theodore Ell, winner of the 2021 Calibre Essay Prize. Dr Ell (an honorary lecturer in literature at ANU) will be in conversation with Beejay Silcox, another Canberra writer and a past ABR Fellow.

The subject of Theodore Ell's award-winning essay, 'Façades of Lebanon' , is the massive explosion on 4 August 2020 when a port explosion devastated Beirut and shook a nation already teetering on the brink of economic collapse.

Dr Ell was living there at the time with his diplomat partner. ' Façades of Lebanon ', represents reportage at its very best. The Calibre judges - Sheila Fitzpatrick, Billy Griffiths, and Peter Rose, Editor of ABR - chose the essay from a record field of 638 essays from 28 different countries.

This was the fifteenth time that ABR has presented the Calibre Prize, now one of the world's major prizes for an original essay.

Watch Online:  You can also stream this event online via YouTube. There's no need to register, just follow this link at 6pm on July 27 to tune in:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ9VjPN4cjA

Date and Times

• Tue 27 Jul 2021, 6:00 pm

Room: RSSS Auditorium

• Theodore Ell
• Beejay Silcox
•   CASS Marketing and Communications   Send email   61255111

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Tedeschi wins 2022 Calibre Essay Prize

Sydney-based classical musician Simon Tedeschi has won the 2022 Calibre Essay Prize for his essay ‘This Woman My Grandmother’. Tedeschi, whose debut Fugitive , will be published by Upswell this month, receives $5000 and publication in the May issue of the Australian Book Review ( ABR ).

‘My grandmother, a Polish Jew, the only survivor of a family obliterated by the Nazis, wrote a memoir of her wartime years shortly before she died sixteen years ago,’ said Tedeschi. ‘Only recently was I able to bring myself to read it. When I did, it caused not only a torrent of memory to erupt but spurred me to find out more about this tormented woman who, despite her vociferousness and overbearing presence, was the bearer of secrets too painful to divulge.’

Selected from 569 entries from 17 countries, this year’s winner was chosen by judges Declan Fry, Beejay Silcox and ABR editor Peter Rose, who said Tedeschi’s essay has ‘a powerful, memorable duality: it’s at once forceful and gentle, timeless and timely’.

‘While Tedeschi plays with eternal themes—the fragility of memory and intergenerational anguish—there is also a quiet urgency to his account of his grandmother, Lucy’s, complicated legacy. We stand on the cusp of a great forgetting: the Holocaust is fading from living memory, and Covid is ravaging our elderly. As we lose our story-keepers and war rages in Europe, it feels vital not just to honour the past, but to acknowledge its knots and nuances. That is what Tedeschi has done in this remarkable essay, with grace, care, and glorious prose craft.’

This year’s runner-up Sarah Gory receives $2500 for her submission, ‘Ghosts, Ghosts Everywhere’, which will be published in a future issue of ABR .

Last year’s winner was Canberra-based editor, translator and author Theodore Ell for ‘Façades of Lebanon’ .

For more information about this year’s winning essay, see the ABR website .

Pic credit: Cole Bennetts

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Calibre prize for an outstanding essay.

On learning that he was the winner of this year’s Calibre, Martin Thomas said: ‘Winning Calibre is a big surprise and a huge honour. My essay pays homage to a senior traditional owner from Arnhem Land who became a friend and teacher to me. I tell how he received back into his country the spirits of kinsmen whose bones were stolen during a scientific expedition in 1948, and in this way prepared for his own death. I feel supremely fortunate that my archival research has opened a dialogue with living communities. Good writing starts with great content.’

Dr Thomas discusses his prize winning essay in an interview (YouTube ANU Channel) with Professor Tom Griffiths, W K Hankcock Professor with the School of History.

Martin Thomas’s essay appears in the April 2013 issue of Australian Book Review, which is now available.

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Tracey Slaughter becomes first overseas winner of Calibre Essay Prize

In her newest published essay Why your hair is long and your stories short , award-winning author and University of Waikato senior lecturer Tracey Slaughter explores memories of her mother’s hairdressing salon, where she grew up. The essay has been awarded the prestigious Australian Book Review’s Calibre Essay Prize, a $10,000 honour that has never been given to an overseas writer before. Slaughter spoke to the Waikato Herald about the difficult journey behind her words.

Tracey Slaughter first learned about domestic violence sitting on the lino floors of her mother’s salon, watching hair drift down around her.

“It was a storytelling space,” Slaughter told the Waikato Herald .

“It’s where my fascination with stories came from. I did a lot of listening.”

Slaughter said the salon was a place of female community with a strong sense of support.

“It was also a dangerous place. I learned disturbing lessons about what it means to be a woman, in particular the story of domestic violence.

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“That was the story that I felt needed to be told in a truthful way.”

But it was also a story that almost never made it to the page.

“To just sit down and tell the story of domestic violence is heavy and when I had tried before, I failed,” Slaughter said.

“Domestic violence goes on being a traumatic truth in so many women’s lives.

“My early encounters with it and with its impact on female psychology - there were some lessons there that it’s taken me a long time to unwind.”

Then, after winning the Landfall Essay Prize in 2015, Slaughter’s writing began to take a different direction.

“When I gave myself permission to work in essay form rather than story mode, it really sprang to life,” Slaughter said.

“I wanted to dig into both the good things but also the harrowing realities of the past.

“It’s been a real journey.”

Then, once she had finished the piece, Slaughter wasn’t sure it was ready to be read by anyone else, let alone be entered into a prestigious overseas writing competition.

“I was just a hair’s breadth away from not sending it in.

“It was very unconventional, very fragmented, very personal. I thought my chances were near zero.”

Slaughter said she has never managed to look at her work from a distance.

“It’s quite extreme, the mind state I still get into. I wanted to send it in as an act of faith, to back myself.”

In the end, Slaughter’s risk paid off.

Her personal essay, Why your hair is long and your stories short, stood out against 567 entries from 28 countries to win first place in the Australian Book Review’s Calibre Essay Prize competition.

Slaughter is also the first overseas writer to be awarded the prize.

“I was absolutely astounded when I got the call that I was in the shortlist. That in itself was enough of a shock.”

Slaughter missed the first phone call announcing her win.

“They called while I was teaching. I saw the Australian number and thought, ‘What is this?’”

Slaughter called the number back.

“I was blown away,” Slaughter said.

“I just feel so blessed in that it feels like such a confirmation of the direction that my work is moving in.”

The Calibre Essay Prize was begun by the Australian Book Review in 2007 and has been open to overseas writers since 2015.

Now in its 18th year, the prize encourages writers of all kinds to explore one of the oldest forms in literature while its 5000-word limit and $10,000 prize set it apart from other essay writing competitions.

Australian Book Review editor and one of this year’s Calibre Prize judges Peter Ross said the response to Slaughter’s essay was “enthusiastic”.

“For me it is one of the finest essays in the history of the Calibre Prize,” Ross told the Waikato Herald.

“It is certainly the most innovative and lyrical.”

Ross said the essay deserved a wider New Zealand audience.

Judges Amy Bailieu, Shannon Burn and Beejay Silcox said in a joint statement that this year’s entries “delighted” them.

“Among them were essays exploring the ethics of AI and the repercussions of war, reflections on loss, climate change and family.”

The judges’ statement said Slaughter’s essay stood out because it was “sharp as good scissors”.

“A beauty salon becomes a refracting point for the dark complexities of womanhood,” the statement said.

“[It is] as evocative as it is decisive.”

Maryana Garcia is a Hamilton-based multimedia reporter covering breaking news in Waikato. She previously wrote for the Rotorua Daily Post and the Bay of Plenty Times .

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ABR – Calibre Essay Prize now open!

Australian book review  welcomes entries in the eleventh  calibre essay prize , australia’s premier prize for a non-fiction essay. all essayists writing in english are eligible, regardless of where they live. entries must be submitted online via our website. discounted entry is available for current  abr  subscribers and bundled subscription and entry packages are available. the prize is worth a total of au$7,500..

Essays must be between 3,000 and 7,000 words and must be written in English.

Judges: Sheila Fitzpatrick, Peter Rose, and Geordie Williamson  

Deadline for entries is 15 March 2017

The first prize is AU$5,000 with a supplementary prize of AU$2,500

Click here to enter online

See  our website  for more information. Please read our  Frequently Asked Questions  page before contacting us with queries about the Calibre Prize.

Click here for more information about past winners.

More information

Contact  Australian Book Review  (03) 9699 8822 or  [email protected]   We gratefully acknowledge the long-standing support of Mr Colin Golvan QC.

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UCL LLM graduate, Dheemanth Vangimalla, wins an international research essay prize

22 May 2024

UCL Laws LLM graduate, Dheemanth Vangimalla, wins the top award in the 4iP Council Research Awards 2023 for a paper based on his LLM research dissertation. Dheemanth will be speaking about his research topic at a webinar organised by 4iP Council, on 30th May.

We are delighted to announce that Dheemanth Vangimalla, a recent UCL Laws graduate of the LLM in Intellectual Property Law has received the top award in the prestigious 4iP Council Research Awards for 2023 for his paper entitled ‘Plausibility and the flotilla: have the English courts drifted from the commodore’s approach to the evidential requirement for patent validity, and if so, is this divergence justified?’

The 4iP Council Research Award is an international research competition for European University students studying at Masters and PhD levels. It seeks to promote new ideas on topics pertinent to the interplay between intellectual property rights and innovation. Submissions, based on a student’s Masters or PhD research, are assessed by 4iP Council’s Research Award Jury made up of intellectual property experts from academia, government and industry. The papers are evaluated based on criteria including:

• Original thinking that broadens the debate on the chosen topic;
• High quality written expression; and
• Relevance to current IP problems and debate

and up to three prizes are awarded (winner and two runners-up).

In his winning paper, Dheemanth considered the origins of ‘plausibility’ and explored the evidential requirement that the term represents. His research revealed that there is divergence between the EPO and English courts in the evidential standard applied by the two decision-making bodies when assessing patent validity. He argues that the English courts adopting a higher standard lacks cogent justification as the standard neither reflects a balance between the competing objectives of the patent system nor limits a plausibility assessment to its targeted mischief. 

This paper was based on Dheemanth’s dissertation for his LLM in Intellectual Property Law, which was also recently awarded the IBIL Prize for Top Performance in an IP-related Research Essay on the LLM . During his LLM, Dheemanth was supervised by our IBIL scholarship PhD researcher, Joshua Bradley .

As part of the prize, the winning essay has been published on 4iP Council’s website , and Dheemanth will be speaking at a webinar about plausibility - orgainised by 4iP - along with IBIL's Professor Jacob, on 30 May. More details of the event can be found here . 

Having completed his LLM in the summer of 2023, Dheemanth has been working as a Research Assistant at the UCL Institute of Brand and Innovation Law  (IBIL), while also completing his bar exams. He will join Three New Square Chambers in the autumn as a pupil barrister.

• Read Dheemanth’s paper here .
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• Register to attend:  Plausibility: from herbicides to insecticides and beyond .

Sokel Prize Essay Prize 2024 ~ Winners

WALTER H. SOKEL PRIZE DEADLINE: APRIL 22, 2024

Entries should be submitted To Prof. Lorna Martens ([email protected]) Thanks to a generous grant from Prof. Walter H. Sokel (1917-2014), the German Department is offering a prize of $350 to the best essay of at least 3,500 words on German literature or culture. The essay may be in English or German. Students may submit revised and/or expanded essays completed for classes taught by the German Department.

10 rules for reading from someone who does it for a living

Where to read, when to read and why you need a pencil in hand: The Post’s Michael Dirda offers some advice from his years as a critic.

How do you read a book? Like most people, I still decipher the meaning of words printed on sheets of paper bound together, but you may prefer to peer at pixels on a screen or listen through ear buds to a favorite narrator. They are all reading, in my book. Each of us, I think, seeks what the critic Roland Barthes called “the pleasure of the text,” though finding delight in what we read doesn’t necessarily mean a steady diet of romance novels and thrillers. Scholarly works, serious fiction, poetry, a writer’s distinctive prose style — all of these deliver their own kinds of textual pleasure.

As someone who has been lucky enough to earn his living in the rarefied world of book reviewing, I’ve gradually developed reading-related habits as part of my work. Some of them — listed below — may even be similar to yours. At the least, I hope a few of my customary routines and practices will be useful in your own reading life.

Be choosy, but not too choosy

I spend a lot of time, often way too much, dithering about what to read next. A book has to fit my mood or even the season. Spooky stories are for winter, comic novels for spring. What’s more, I like to mix it up, the old with the new, a literary biography this week, a science fiction classic the next. I can adjust my expectations up or down — you don’t read Thomas Mann’s “Doctor Faustus” in the same way you read Ian Fleming ’s “Dr. No.” — but the book must be, on some level, exciting. I try to avoid wasting time on anything that leaves me indifferent. As Jesus memorably told the Laodiceans: “Because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

Editions matter

In my youth, I could read paperbacks printed in tiny type on pages you could see through. No more. These days, I opt for hardcovers whenever possible, if only because they’re generally easier on aging eyes. For classics, I want a good scholarly edition; for translated works, I try to acquire the best English version. This just makes sense. As a reviewer, I often work with a galley or advance reading copy of a forthcoming title, but these are simply tools of the trade. I generally don’t keep them. I want the finished book.

Check the small stuff

Before turning to Chapter 1, I glance at a book’s cover art, check out the author’s dust jacket biography and photo, and read through the back page endorsements. Unlike many people, I pay close attention to copyright dates, introductions, dedications, acknowledgments and bibliographies. All these provide hints to the kind of book one is dealing with.

When to read

Mine is a simple system: I read from morning till bedtime, with breaks for my job, family, meetings with friends, exercise, household chores and periodic review of my life’s greatest blunders. On the days I don’t read, I write. As I say, it’s a simple system. Many people complain that they have no time for books, yet somehow they manage to spend three or more hours a day watching television or scrolling through social media on their phones. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

Where to read

Even though I know better, I still read more often than not while sprawled in an overstuffed armchair or on an old couch. You probably do something similar. Not only ergonomically bad, these soft options invite dozing. Realistically, the best place to read is at a table or desk with lots of good light. Other good locations include the public library, an outside table at a coffee shop away from background music and other customers, and the quiet car on the train to New York. In truth, though, don’t expect to find an ideal place to read. Trust me: You never will. Instead, as the Nike slogan says, Just Do It.

Don’t read in a vacuum

To read any book well often requires knowledge of its author, context, history. So I surround myself, when possible or appropriate, with collateral texts to help me better appreciate the writer’s artistry or arguments. These can be biographies, volumes of criticism, competing titles on the same subject or, most basically, other books by the same author. For example, if I’m reading E. Nesbit’s “Five Children and It,” I want to have the sequels, “The Phoenix and the Carpet” and “The Story of the Amulet,” close at hand for possible comparison. This is one justification for building a personal library. I also keep within easy reach a notebook, magnifying glass and Chambers 20th Century Dictionary. Other reference books are shelved near where I type these words.

Attention must be paid

As I read, I do all I can to live up to Henry James’s dictum: “Be one on whom nothing is lost.” This vigilance means that I seldom lose myself in the story, which is the devil’s bargain I made by becoming a professional reviewer. As it is, I track the clues in whodunits and the symbolic events or objects in literary fiction. I note oddities of style, repetitions, possible foreshadowings and anomalies that might be meaningful. I frequently flip back to previous pages to check details. In every way, then, I try to make my first reading as intensive and comprehensive as possible, knowing I may not pass this way again.

Be prepared to take notes

I can’t open a book without a pencil either in my hand or nestled conveniently in that space between my right ear and skull. For a long time, my weapon of choice was a No. 2 Ticonderoga pencil, but it now tends to be a Paper Mate disposable mechanical pencil. As a boy, I took to heart the lessons of Mortimer J. Adler’s essay “How to Mark a Book.” I place two or three vertical lines next to key passages, scribble notes to myself in the margins, sometimes make longer comments on the blank end papers. I never underline words or phrases — this seems too much like sophomoric highlighting, plus it just looks ugly. All these practices serve one end: to keep me actively engaged mentally with the words on the page. For the same reason, I scorn bookmarks: If you can’t remember where you stopped reading, you haven’t been paying close enough attention.

Make some noise

I don’t skim or speed read, though I envy people, like the late Harold Bloom, who can zip through a novel in 20 minutes. When I try to pick up my own reading pace, I end up constantly flogging myself not to slow down. Where’s the fun in that? Woody Allen once said that he’d taken a speed-reading course and had finished “War and Peace” in half an hour; he gathered that it was about Russia. As an exceptionally slow reader, I mentally murmur every word on the page, which allows me to savor the author’s style and to remember what he or she has said. Sometimes I also pause to copy a striking passage into my commonplace book. Here’s a fairly recent example from the poet John Ashbery: “I am aware of the pejorative associations of the word ‘escapist,’ but I insist that we need all the escapism we can get and even that isn’t going to be enough.”

Find a shelf

After finishing a book, I tend to keep it. While not a frequent rereader, I do like to refresh my acquaintance with old favorites, if only by opening one up occasionally to enjoy a page or a passage. When I look at my living room’s bookcases, while sleepily sipping coffee in the morning, I see not only my past laid out before me but also my future: Someday I will read David Cecil’s “Melbourne,” a biography of the Victorian prime minister that was said to be John F. Kennedy’s favorite book. Someday, I will get to — hangs head in shame — Willa Cather’s “The Professor’s House.” Other shelves remind me of the books I want to reread: Angela Carter’s “Nights at the Circus,” Dawn Powell’s “The Locusts Have No King,” Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” Frederick Exley’s “A Fan’s Notes.”

Long ago, one of my teachers in high school told me that he didn’t feel right unless he spent at least three hours a day reading. This seemed incredible to me then. Not anymore.

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And the Winner Is: Kendrick Lamar. And Old-School Hip-Hop.

By Laurence Ralph

Dr. Ralph is a professor of anthropology at Princeton.

The rap battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar is about more than whatever personal beefs these two men have with each other. As many have noted , it is a significant moment in hip-hop history, and not just because Mr. Lamar’s diss track “ Not Like Us ,” released last week, has become the hip-hop song with the most plays on U.S. Spotify in a single day — surpassing the high set previously by Drake and Lil Baby.

What sets this rap battle apart from previous high-profile hip-hop feuds is its magnitude and implications for popular music. Hip-hop, born as an underground movement, has long been a global phenomenon, leading certain artists to blur the lines between authenticity and commercialization. The global pop audience has always been more drawn to a simplified hip-hop sound devoid of the complex lyrics and politicized messages that characterize “conscious” rap.

Mr. Lamar’s victory signals a resurgence of lyrically rich rap — and a return to the roots of hip-hop culture — all while establishing a new template for relevance in an era when content can go viral instantly on social media and streaming platforms. If Drake, who has become the face of rap’s mainstream pop faction, has lost this battle, that setback is not his alone.

Mr. Lamar’s ability to write layered and intricate lyrics has long been lauded. But this battle has brought new attention and enthusiasm to the particular artistic element at which he excels. Fans have scrambled to decipher his complex verses with each new release. (The website Genius , where users annotate lyrics, crashed from the volume of visitors investigating this feud.) Mr. Lamar’s apparent decision to remove copyright protections for “Not Like Us” has also enabled a wide dissemination of the track, allowing content creators to monetize posts featuring the song.

Removing these kind of constraints on the distribution of the song signals a new and savvy approach to marketing and sales in the music industry. It’s another facet of Mr. Lamar’s victory — enlisting countless unseen collaborators to spread his message and join his crusade.

Drake has been doing his best to counter and innovate. His second volley in the battle, “Taylor Made Freestyle,” incorporated A.I. to enlist two iconic figures from West Coast hip-hop: Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg. (Drake removed the song from social media after objections from Mr. Shakur’s estate .) Drake also took direct aim at Mr. Lamar’s supposed lyrical prowess, taunting him to respond with a “quintuple entendre.”

Underestimating Mr. Lamar — who won a Pulitzer Prize for his album “DAMN.” — was a questionable move. Mr. Lamar’s response, “ Euphoria ,” arrived with the precision and effectiveness of a heat-seeking missile. The title “Euphoria” nods not only to the feeling but to the HBO series on which Drake has been an executive producer — a show known for its controversial portrayal of teenage sexuality, a parallel that underscores Mr. Lamar’s allegations that Drake harbors inappropriate infatuations.

In the arena of rap battles, entendres are wielded precisely because they imbue words with layers of meaning. Nowhere is this more evident than in the stark contrast between love and hate, the poles around which rap oscillates. In a pivotal moment in “Euphoria,” Mr. Lamar adopted the persona of the late rapper DMX, who in 2012 aired his grievances about Drake on “The Breakfast Club,” a radio show that was a cornerstone of hip-hop media. On the track, Mr. Lamar echoes DMX as he snarls at Drake, “I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress.”

Drake parried by questioning Mr. Lamar’s authenticity, characterizing his portrayal of Black empowerment as superficial and insincere. But Mr. Lamar swiftly retaliated, targeting Drake’s alleged cultural appropriation. Authenticity in hip-hop is often tied to a rapper’s ability to embody the distinctive sound of their hometown — something Drake, a Canadian of ambiguous racial identity, has skillfully transcended, crossing geographical and musical boundaries and incorporating regional sounds from across the United States, particularly the South.

In the closing lines of “Not Like Us,” Mr. Lamar zeros in on what he sees as Drake’s vulnerability. Mr. Lamar’s artistry shines through as he seamlessly weaves together social commentary and catchy rhythms. He begins by evoking the painful legacy of Black Americans in chains, then highlights Atlanta’s historical significance as a hub for the slave trade in the South — before drawing parallels to Drake’s exploitation of Southern rap culture for personal gain. His indictment culminates with a damning accusation: “You run to Atlanta when you need a few dollars,” he says. Drake is not a “colleague,” he’s a “colonizer.”

Through his incisive lyrics Mr. Lamar exposes the complexities of cultural identity and power dynamics within the rap industry — all while carrying the banner of lyrical rap. His verbal offensive proves the depth and staying power of hip-hop’s history and culture, with its legacy of lyrical dexterity and complexity.

Armed with these tools and talents, Mr. Lamar managed to topple Drake, and in the process has shown himself, by calling on hip-hop’s traditions, to be more relevant to the current moment. At least until the bell sounds to signal the next round.

Laurence Ralph is a professor of anthropology at Princeton and the author of “Sito: An American Teenager and the City That Failed Him.”

Source photographs by Arturo Holmes/MG23 and Prince Williams, via Getty Images.

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Past winners of the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize

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Rowan Heath: ‘ The Mannequin ’

Tracy Ellis: ‘ Natural Wonder ’

Camilla Chaudhary: ‘ The Enemy, Asyndeton ’

Mykaela Saunders: ‘ River Story ’

Sonja Dechian: ‘ The Point-Blank Murder ’

Madelaine Lucas: ‘ Ruins ’

Eliza Robertson: ‘ Pheidippides ’

Josephine Rowe: ‘ Glisk ’

Rob Magnuson Smith: ‘ The Elector of Nossnearly ’

Jennifer Down: ‘ Aokigahara ’

Michelle Michau-Crawford: ‘ Leaving Elvis ’

Sue Hurley: ‘ Patterns in Nature ’

Carrie Tiffany: ‘ Before He Left the Family ’

Gregory day: ‘ the neighbour’s beans ’.

Four stories were commended in the 2011 Jolley Prize. They were: ‘ Russell Drysdale's Trousers ’ by Catherine Moffat, ‘ Nitrogen ’ by Meg Mundell, ‘Bad Luck’ by Rose Lane, and ‘ A Body of Water ’ by Else Fitzgerald.

Maria Takolander: ‘ A Roānkin Philosophy of Poetry ’

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