Haddad, Walker win 2025 KYD Creative Nonfiction Essay Prize
Kill Your Darlings (KYD) has announced George Haddad and Sarah Walker as joint winners of the 2025 KYD Creative Nonfiction Essay Prize.
“ وجبت wejbet”, Haddad’s winning essay, is described by KYD as “anchored in the Arab conceptualisation of hospitality and politeness, addressing how cultural obligation collides with the lived experience of touch, consent and desire”. KYD plans to publish the essay soon.
Haddad is an author, artist and academic living on Gadigal land. Among his publications is the novel Losing Face (UQP, 2022), which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin and shortlisted in fiction category of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
“Piscine”, Walker’s winning essay, is described by KYD as “a moving work of hybrid memoir that pulls together the watery currents of addiction, dementia, grief, Australian drinking culture and the human evolution from fish”. This essay has been published in KYD.
Walker is an author, artist and photographer living in Naarm. Her first book, The First Time I Thought I Was Dying (UQP, 2021), won the Quentin Bryce Award.
Each winning writer receives $1750 in prize money, combining the allocation for the first and second prize for the competition. This is the first time that two writers have jointly won the prize.
Judges for the prize were KYD publisher Rebecca Stafford and KYD editor Suzy Garcia. On behalf of the judging panel, Garcia said of the two winning essays, “They articulate with honesty what is painful, what is human, what is hard to capture, and yet these two writers have done so with remarkable skill and beauty.”
KYD also named Benedicte O’Leary-Rutherford as runner-up for their essay “Slug Theory”, described as “a hybrid of comic illustration and text [which] explores the stickiness of art and creative reciprocity”. O’Leary-Rutherford receives $1000 in prize money, and the essay is set to appear in KYD early next year.
These essays were selected from a shortlist of 6, which was announced earlier this month.
Established in 2022, the prize aims “to celebrate and showcase the best and most inventive creative nonfiction”. The most recent winner was Xiaole Zhan in 2023 for their essay “Think an Empty Room, Moonly with Phone Glow”.
KYD said it plans to run the competition again in 2026. More information about the prize, the shortlist and the winning essays is available on the KYD website.
Pictured [left to right]: George Haddad and Sarah Walker.
Category: Awards Local news
