From the ABR media release. My sincere thanks to the judges and the excellent staff of Australian Book Review.

Lucas Grainger-Brown is the winner of the twelfth Calibre Essay Prize – Australia’s most prestigious essay prize. The judges – novelist Andrea Goldsmith, NewSouth Executive Publisher Phillipa McGuinness, and ABR Editor Peter Rose – chose Lucas’s essay ‘We Three Hundred’ from a field of over 200 essays submitted from thirteen countries. Lucas receives $5,000, and his essay appears in the April 400th issue of Australian Book Review.

‘We Three Hundred’ is a candid and unsentimental account of life as a cadet at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra for a bookish, idealistic adolescent straight out of high school.

On learning that he had won the Calibre Essay Prize, Lucas Grainger-Brown commented: ‘It is an incredible honour to win the Calibre Essay Prize. When I was ready to write out this formative story, I knew I had to submit it to the Calibre Prize. Australian Book Review provide a fantastic national platform for the appreciation of Australian arts, ideas and culture. I hope my essay is read as a constructive addition to the ongoing dialogue about who we are and where we are going.’

This winner of the second prize, worth $2,500, is Kirsten Tranter. Her essay, entitled ‘Once Again’, will be published in an upcoming issue.