Blue

Judges' comments

A young man leaves home for the first time. Letters from his mum keep him grounded in a connection to family until, one day, a letter slices through that link. This slow-burn piece presents Mark, its young protagonist, with moving emotional intimacy. In his depiction, Thomas Weatherall refuses to look away or offer retrofitted optimism regarding the realities of loss and grief. There is a gentleness and beauty — offset by Weatherall’s use of symbolism.

In Blue, Weatherall has produced a work of cumulative effect that bravely eschews structural conventions. Instead, it is the micro details that merge to create the whole and a sense of emotional and dramatic development. A moving mimesis of what working through grief is really like.