The Avery Review Essay Prize 2023
SUBMISSIONS DUE JANUARY 31, 2023
The Avery Review, a journal of critical essays on architecture published by the Office of Publications at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, invites submissions for its sixth annual Essay Prize. The call is open to current students (undergraduate and masters) and recent graduates, whether in schools of architecture or elsewhere (eligibility details below). In keeping with the mission of the journal, we hope to receive submissions that use the genres of the review and the critical essay to explore the urgent questions animating the field of architecture. We’re looking for essays that test and expand the author’s own intellectual commitments—theoretical, architectural, and political—through the work of others.
We plan to award one first-place prize ($4,000) and three second-place prizes ($2,000) across the various categories of eligible participants. The winning essays will be published in our June 2023 issue.
We encourage you to (re)visit and (re)read the prize winning essays of years past!
In 2022, Bella Carmelita Carriker complicated the “public” memory of 9/11, recording the long-term violences enacted against low-income communities of color; Supriya Ambwani exposed histories of spatial violence and colonial extraction entangled in the Great Hedge of India; Gealese Peebles traced the historiographic silhouette of Norma Merrick Sklarek to scrutinize architecture’s diversity narratives; and Peter Paul Walhout unsubscribed from the internet-as-utility rhetoric in NYC that has come to stand in for questions of inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2021, Batoul Faour took stock of the shattered glass in Beirut in the aftermath of the August 4th port explosion to uncover political violence waged through this fragile material; Jacob Cascio carefully uncovered the story of the National AIDS Memorial Grove’s ever-changing landscape; Tamara Zeina Jamil looked beyond Rikers Island to reveal the machinations of the carceral industrial complex; and Brandon Adriano Ortiz coiled together a personal, spatial, and temporal account of Taos and the Taos Pueblo that casts body, building, and micaceous clay into ongoing relation.
And we invite you to read essays from our 2018, 2019, and 2020 Essay Prize winners in issues 31, 39, and 46, which can be found on our Issues page.
Submissions
Submissions for the Avery Review Essay Prize should take the form of critical essays on books, buildings, and other architectural media, broadly defined. We’re delighted to receive work that was developed in the context of classes and seminars as well as independent writing. Our essays are typically 3,000–4,500 words in length and have some object of review at their core. We like stylish, concise, accessible, and earnestly felt writing. Texts should be submitted as double-spaced Word files without images; you may provide six to eight images compiled into a separate PDF (keep attachments to 3mb max please). Submissions should be emailed to editors@averyreview.com.
Eligibility
Current undergraduates, current masters-level students, and recent graduates (graduation date after 12/1/2021) from any undergraduate or master’s program at any university are eligible. Please include your student status and graduation date (actual or anticipated) in your submission email. We encourage submissions from any field of study that takes architecture as a subject.
If you will be a student in the 2023–2024 academic year, please be aware that in accordance with university and federal policy, prizes and awards are taxable and are reported for inclusion in student financial aid packages, and may reduce other financial aid the student may receive.