Lucy Mercer working with curator Lou Stoppard on wax exhibition based on her prize-winning Afterlife

Lucy Mercer is working with the writer and curator Lou Stoppard to develop her essay "Afterlife" into a wax exhibition.

In June, Mercer won the 2024 Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler & LeWitt Studios Essay Prize for her proposal for "Afterlife", which explores mortality and the afterlives of materials through the medium of wax. Following the announcement of her win, she also created Fitzcarraldo Editions-themed candles.

The Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler & LeWitt Studios Essay Prize is an annual competition for unpublished writers, awarding a £3,000 advance to the best proposal for a book-length essay of at least 25,000 words.

The winner also has the opportunity to spend up to two months in residency at the Mahler & LeWitt Studios in Spoleto, Italy to work on their book, which is then published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

"Spilling across poetic thinking, candle-making, the everyday, culture and ecology, and absorbing a wide range of references including Madame Tussauds, Europe’s biggest industrial candle-making factory and the work of poets such as Louise Glück and Mary Ruefle, this lyric essay reapproaches this familiar, but critically neglected biosynthetic material," the synopsis says. "’Afterlife’ asks how we might conceptualise mortality as we become more collectively conscious of our environmental connectedness."

Mercer said: "I’m honoured to be the recipient of this year’s essay prize. It’s a dream come true to work on ’Afterlife’ with the team at Fitzcarraldo Editions, whose luminescent books have already given me so much as a reader, as for so many others."

The prize was judged by Joanna Biggs, Brian Dillon, Joanna Kavenna, Max Porter and Jacques Testard, who were looking for essays that "explore and expand the possibilities of the essay form".

Day added: "Lucy’s proposal for ’Afterlife’ is accomplished, both conceptually and formally. It’s a unique project and one which we’re excited to be publishing."

Ghalya Saadawi won the prize in 2023 for "Between October and November", which will be published in due course.