Zheng wins 2024 Island Nonfiction Prize

Island has announced that Cherry Zheng is the winner of the 2024 Island Nonfiction Prize for the piece ‘Fucking with Chineseness’.

Zheng is a writer of Cantonese heritage, who was an ANU university medallist and a New Colombo Plan scholar. Her work has been previously published in Overland and the forthcoming British Science Fiction Association anthology Fission, and they also recently completed a StoryCasters 2.0 mentorship. She is also a member of Worship Queer Collective and ANTRA and pole dances under the stage name Cherry Chopstick.

Island nonfiction editor Keely Jobe—who judged the prize alongside Erin Riley and Daniel Nour—said of the winning piece: ‘Zheng challenges us to understand cultural belonging in new ways, subverting the paradigm of the “good migrant” with wry humour and a touching longing to understand and be understood. The voice is whip-smart, conflicted, and unlike anything we had read before.’

Zheng receives $3000 and an Island subscription, and their piece will be published in the forthcoming Island issue 171, alongside the four other shortlisted pieces.

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