Christ Church English Student wins Chancellor's English Essay Prize

Hebe said: “The process of writing this essay has been a surprisingly personal one and the words have ended up meaning a lot to me. I’m so grateful that I’ve been given the opportunity to share it all.” 

The prize was judged by Dr Erica McAlpine, Professor Alice Oswald and Professor Ros Ballaster. They commented: "The judges were unanimous in awarding this essay the Chancellor's prize. We loved this metamorphic response to metamorphosis. This beautifully written essay explores narratives of transformation from Greek and Roman myth, from medieval and Renaissance literature up to contemporary Afro-Caribbean/Cuban art.

“Its three sections – creation, entanglement, emergence – imitate Ovidian forms in their looping back, recursive preoccupations, and organic, associative growth. There is nothing timid or settled in this account – images move at high speed and every kind of art form gets examined, while our preconception that metamorphosis institutes change is put under intellectual and confessional pressure. Learned, strange, but always original, we appreciated its ambition and spontaneity."

Professor Mishtooni Bose, Tutor in English at Christ Church said: “I want to offer my warm congratulations, and those of my colleagues at Christ Church, to Hebe on her excellent achievement in winning the Chancellor’s English Essay Prize.

“It’s a very well-deserved award, and I hope that her fellow students will feel encouraged by her success to keep pursuing their own writing, whether fictional or non-fictional, prose or poetry.

“My thanks, too, to the Essay Prize judges for seeing the potential in her writing, and for rewarding it.”