Rodrick wins inaugural Pearl Prize

Spencer M F Rodrick has won the inaugural Pearl Prize, presented by queer arts and cultural organisation Midsumma.

Rodrick, who was chosen from a list of 15 finalists, and was previously part of Express Media’s Toolkits: Graphic Narratives class of 2023, is ‘a genderqueer (and generally queer) autistic creator based in Naarm who uses any pronouns’.

Said Midsumma: ‘They “self-published” their first novel at 9 years old, proudly presenting a 20-something page fantasy as a gift to their parents—and thus began the accumulation of hundreds of unfilled notebooks, abandoned word documents, and unfinished stories as they developed their style. After all this, they’ve found their love in writing stories about being extremely normal in space but very weird on earth, and are in the process of teaching themselves video game coding and animation.’

Midsumma described the Pearl Prize, which is presented with Osborne and Fawkner Publishing, as ‘a writing award where Queer writers have a platform of self-expression through the writing landscape and into publication’. ‘The Pearl Prize is unique to Midsumma Festival as it is the first of its kind in a queer arts and culture festival in Australia.’

Category: Awards Local news