Joanna Pocock has won the 2018 the prize Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler & LeWitt Essay Prize for Surrender, a narrative non-fiction work on the changing landscape of the West and the scavenger, rewilder and Ecosexual communities, inspired by a two-year stay in Montana.
Joanna Pocock is an Irish-Canadian writer living in London. Her writing has notably appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation and she is a contributor to the Dark Mountain project. Surrender was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in May 2019. and in 2021 she was awarded the Arts Foundation’s Environmental Writing Fellowship.
The other five shortlisted entries were Rachel Andrews’ A Woman’s Place, Oliver Basciano’s Tichileşti, Felix Bazalgette’s Natural Magic, Gay Bar by Jeremy Atherton Lin, and Rebecca Perry’s Four Invocations. The 2018 Essay Prize was judged by Joanna Biggs, Brian Dillon, Joanna Kavenna, Paul Keegan and Jacques Testard.