The co-editors of the Katherine Mansfield Studies book series are pleased to announce that the 2026 Essay Prize, to the value of £200, for a scholarly essay on the theme of ‘Placing Katherine Mansfield’, has been awarded to Dr Imola Nagy-Seres, KU Leuven, Belgium.Her winning essay ‘“On the border of the sea”: Katherine Mansfield’s Queer Littoral Aesthetic’ impressed this year’s judging panel – Professor Janet Wilson, Dr Chris Mourant, and John Wood – with its elegant synthesis of scholarship and analysis, and the new light it shines on ‘At the Bay’. The essay uses the perspectives of queer studies to illuminate the littoral or shoreline as space for a more creative, less regulated way of being, one that foregrounds the story’s minor characters Lottie and Jonathan Pike. Chair of the Judges, Janet Wilson, comments that the essay shows how Mansfield’s formal compositional structures are shaped by her queer authorial identity, exploring issues of identity, childhood and gender in ways that are ahead of her time.
Many of this year’s essay submissions were of such a high standard that making a final selection was a challenge for the judges. Among the final short list, two other essays deserve special commendation. ‘“Little Rags and Shreds of Your Very Life”: Ecofeminist Resistance and the Agency of Nature in Katherine Mansfield’s “Prelude”’, by Dr Khawla Bendjemil, University of 8 May 1945, Algeria, impressed with its assured theoretical approach to Mansfield’s representations of analogous forms of domination of women and nature, while teasing out covert resistances to colonial and patriarchal power, suggesting a reading practice that accommodates her advanced ecofeminist thought. ‘Dandelion Seeds in a Pawa Shell: Katherine Mansfield’s Recentring of Indigenous Flora, 1907–1922’, by Violet Mo Witt, University of Oxford, UK, was singled out for its detailed argument and apposite exemplification, reflecting in-depth scholarship. The discussion of Mansfield’s knowledge of Māori, botany and local ecology, convincingly demonstrates how she supercedes fictional representations of native flora associated with ‘Māoriland’. The judges found this essay to be beautifully written and commended the author’s impressive knowledge in her discussion of Mansfield’s use of indigenous and transplanted flora.
These three essays, along with several others, will appear in Volume 19 of Katherine Mansfield Studies, titled Placing Katherine Mansfield, to be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2027.