Judges' report

Eloise Grills takes our gaze to task in big beautiful female theory. The book as an object alone is ambitious enough to warrant recognition. Grills transforms writings (impressive in their own right) into visual essayistic feasts for the reader. At times theoretical, heavy but not dense, her work attends to an under-examined body in Australian literature. It’s a body onto which, Grills demonstrates, much of our cultural imaginary silently attaches, then loathes and fears – the fat body. big beautiful female theory is disarmingly raw, both in what it reveals about its narrator and subject, and in its deceivingly slapdash composition. But Grills maintains a self-awareness that’s rarely self-indulgent, and at times zooms out from introspection without the suspicion of the reader – and then it implicates us.