Katherine Mansfield Society’s Annual Essay Prize 2024: Winner Announcement 

 

The co-editors of the Katherine Mansfield Studies book series are pleased to announce that the 2024 Katherine Mansfield Society Essay Prize, with a value of £200, for a scholarly essay on the theme of Katherine Mansfield and Women, has been awarded to John Wood for his essay ‘Katherine Mansfield’s Women: “Ninon de Longclothes”’. The judges, Professor Clare Hanson, Professor Rishona Zimring and Dr Claire Drewery, found this to be an excellent essay which argues persuasively for Mansfield’s authorship of four pseudonymous pieces in the New Age. The essay is lucidly argued, deeply researched, and makes judicious use of contextual and biographical evidence. As the Chair of the Judges, Professor Clare Hanson noted, it makes a significant contribution to Mansfield studies which enlarges our understanding of the complex personal and professional networks which shaped her writing practice. The judges would also like to highly commend Gwenda Koo’s essay, ‘Women’s Experience of Emotion: Katherine Mansfield’s “Taking the Veil” and “A Dill Pickle”’, for its original approach to the representation of emotion in Mansfield’s fiction and its subtle attunement to the rhythms of her prose. Both essays will appear in volume 17 of Katherine Mansfield Studies.