Yves Rees wins 2020 Calibre Essay Prize

Writer and historian Yves Rees has won the $5000 2020 Calibre Essay Prize for their essay ‘Reading the Mess Backwards’, in which they re-examine their youth in light of coming out as transgender at the age of 31.

Rees said, ‘In my essay, I’ve sketched the kind of narrative I hungered to read: a story of trans becoming that digs into the messiness of bodies, gender and identity. My hope is that, as such stories proliferate, we will all—men and women, cisgender and trans—be liberated from the prison of patriarchy, with its suffocating gender binary. The recognition afforded by the Calibre Prize is an important step in that struggle.’

‘Reading the Mess Backwards’ will appear in the June–July 2020 issue of Australian Book Review (ABR).

Kate Middleton was named runner-up for ‘The Dolorimeter’, an account of the her experience with illness. She receives $2,500 and her essay will appear in the August issue of ABR.

Writers J M Coetzee and Lisa Gorton and ABR editor Peter Rose chose Rees’ winning essay from a ‘record field’ of almost 600 entries from 29 different countries.

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

Category: Awards Local news