The Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler and LeWitt Studios Essay Prize awards £3,000 to the best proposal for a book-length essay (minimum 25,000 words) by a writer resident in the UK and Ireland who has yet to secure a publishing deal. AA alumnus Toby Chai's proposal, Embryos Denied Mitosis, has been shortlisted for the prize, with the winner being announced in June.

Embryos Denied Mitosis fuses memoir and autoethnographic analysis in an examination of immigration and transitioning. Spanning personal and familial experiences of gender dysphoria, the Malayan Emergency, the UK immigration system, Tier 1 Exceptional Talent visas, the British colonial penal code and historical gender plurality in South East Asia, the essay unpicks the legitimacy of identities assigned at birth and their entanglement in the history of colonisation and racialisation. This book is the development of Toby’s Fifth Year project at the AA.

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Image courtesy Toby Chai.