'Harvest' : Shortlisted for Hachette's Richell Prize (2026)

The best news I've received this year arrived via a phone call two days after we lost our beautiful Charli ‘Bubbles’. This week alone has been a rollercoaster, and I would like to thank Hachette and the Emerging Writers Festival for giving me one of the highs.

Harvest is so incredibly close to my heart, and my anger, and regardless of what happens I know the women in these pages will find their way out somehow.

Congratulations to all the shortlisters! There are so many interesting concepts and genres present, and I feel honoured to be listed alongside you.

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In a barren world, what would society look like if women literally bore fruit?

Harvest is the answer to that question.

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Harvest was initially informed by research from, and created for (in short form), my master’s dissertation on feminist-coded rage in dystopian fantasy. From the 4,300-word short story an estimated to be 90,000-word dark, body horror, dystopian fantasy manuscript bloomed.

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Sneak Peek of Harvest

Prelude

We harvest her ashes first.

We trawl about the burning site, blackening our brown trousers and green skirts as we kneel, scrape the ashes with dustpans, and slide them into wicker baskets. We work swiftly and in solemn silence.

The new, Foreign girl is escorted by heavy-booted guards and directed to follow my lead. She watches with doe eyes I know she will get in trouble for. I was starting to wonder who would fill the empty bunk beside mine.

‘Like… this?’ she says in a disjointed way, accent thick on her tongue. She scrapes the ashes, glancing at me as if for assurance. As she hesitantly slides the ashes into my basket, I take the opportunity to really look at her. I saw her from afar when she was first escorted into Harvest, though I had not seen her in such detail. Beyond seeing a distant flame-hair, I only had the skittish murmurings of the other women—known for their whispers that always dramatised reality by the time the grapevine reached me.

She is a Foreign and she is a beauty.

Her eyes are the luscious greens from a good harvest, and her cheeks blush a pretty pink under some fuzz. I only need a brief glimpse to know that her harvest is good. She will be lucky to last a month amongst us Undesignated and Undesirables. They will snatch her and the bunk will be empty again soon.

Her flaming hair and light brown freckles had the other women talking about apples and watermelons the past few days, but their attention today has been stolen by the ashes we carry.

‘She was always so sweet,’ Astrid says as she regards the ashes in her cupped palms with reverence. ‘And pink. I pray she bears us strawberries.’

The Foreign girl looks at me with those wide eyes, though I am not sure what for.

‘I…’ She holds her hands out, fingers flexing as if to grasp at words unknown to her. ‘I… Erasmia.’

I furrow my brows, wondering what in the Barren wasteland she said. The longer I stare in confusion, the more visibly stressed she becomes. It is not until she repeats herself, frantically tapping her fingertips to her chest, that I realise she is offering her name. I word it out silently, testing the syllables on my tongue.

‘You…’ she says, motioning her upwards palms closer. Only stopping when I withdraw. I begin to wonder if the Elders were telling the truth—that those who wander out into the Barren, and breathe its toxic ash, come back as babbling idiots having forgotten how to talk. I side-eye Erasmus as she repeats herself again. ‘You?’

There is an urgency in her voice when I stand with basket and dustpan in hand, moving to a more ash-rich land. She follows, landing on her knees beside me. I sigh.

‘My mother named me Aletheia.’

Delicate brows scrunch her milky skin like brittle parchment. She must have forgotten most of those words.

‘You…’ She hesitates, briefly gesturing to the group of women closest to us. I glare at Astrid as she goes on and on about how lovely Seer was as if she knew her. ‘They…’ Erasmia swallows, brows furrowing in frustration. ‘They say, Lethe.’

I flinch at the way she hisses my name. I dare another glare in Astrid’s direction, and she sheepishly averts her eyes. They have been talking about me.

‘That was the nickname I was given,’ I mumble.

That seems to have confused her even more. Perhaps nicknames are not a common practice wherever she came from.

I know she came from somewhere beyond the Barren—despite Harvest’s Elders vehemently preaching to us otherwise—as it is impossible to survive out there and it is impossible to leave Harvest.

The entire world, aside from Harvest and wherever Erasmia survived, is a forever-long flat plain of barren soil, often ash-covered from the ash-rains, where only those stubborn black daffodils grow, and sodden mushrooms sprout beneath the ruin of each Harvest burning. Almost as if the ingredients of the fungi lay dormant, waiting until the nutrients of Harvest’s next luckless woman seep into the soil, temporarily softening it. Soon, once all the ash is collected, we will harvest her mushrooms too.

I parse through the Elder’s explanation as Erasmia and I silently scrape at the soil. Every sermon following a Foreign’s arrival, it is announced that the Foreign is not a Foreign at all—but a fellow Harvester that got outside the settlement in a faraway district and returned, delirious and brain broken, to our district. That is why nobody knows them, and why they cannot talk normally. But if I know anything about this world, it is that leaving Harvest is not only stupid, but impossible. And as I look to Erasmia, I know that even if it were possible, she is not one to be capable of it.

‘Mother…’ I flinch at her voice, now closer. I would scold Erasmia, tell her to back off if not for her eyes not on me as she diligently scrapes the ashes. ‘Mother.’ She points at her chest, shakes her head. ‘Gone.’

I work the muscles in my jaw when she looks at me, and only points, mouthing ‘mother’ with the question in her eyes. I shake my head, and hate the way her eyes go sad, so I move my gaze and watch my hands as they work.

My fingers sift through the light ashes and push into the cool, dark soil. I feel for the fungus, and Erasmia watches in fascination as I dislodge and pull out a palm-sized mushroom. I let her come closer to inspect it. I stiffen as she brings her face close and gives it a big sniff. Her face, once scrunched in suspicion, changes into approval.

‘Good,’ she says.

I try to ignore the lingering warmth in my fingers from her breath.

I do not do what I want to do—I do not wrap my fingers around her face and stab them into her blushing cheeks. I do not shake her and tell her: No, no it is not good. I do not bother because she would not understand. And though she may not have a mother either, I doubt she watched her on the stake suppressing screams, only to be sent on her first collection trip the following morn.

Mother’s ashes were still slightly warm in my fingers, and her mushrooms were sickeningly moist. She was the last of a long line-up of traitorous women. Her burning ceremony welcomed the dawning sun. It shone prettily across the Barren like a bad omen.

Erasmia seems to have noticed my brewing resentment—albeit with confusion creasing her skin—as when we’re done with harvesting the mushrooms and are escorted back into Harvest, she keeps her distance.

The imposing and impossibly tall masonry wall swallows our party, closing its maw slowly and with precision, as the gatemen wrangle the drawbridge chains. The gate itself acts more like stairs than a bridge, though, as the path to the gateway is a steep cliff. And so the wooden gate has large steps hewn into its top for us to traverse and spikes carved out of its underbelly to better cling at the cliff. Every trek in and out of this gate, I must stop myself from imagining what would become of anyone beneath those spikes.

Like clockwork, the women split into two groups and wordlessly exchange the baskets of mushrooms and ash. Those with the mushrooms go to the kitchens, and those with the ash walk to the vast, ploughed fields that follow Harvest’s border wall. Over time, we found our equilibrium, and so I always end up with the ashes—a more isolated, though labour-intensive job.

With wicker baskets clenched in tired fists, we are each escorted to our designated plough line. Erasmia sheepishly follows. It is not a quick job. We painstakingly spread the ashes along the opening in the freshly blooded earth, sprinkling them like weightless seeds.

Erasmia watches me with keen and concerned eyes. She is smart not to hound me, to try to gain my approval, as memories of my first ash spreading collect behind my eyes. My mother’s ashes were fleeting, and when I sowed them into the soil so did dread sow itself in my chest. Over the two weeks waiting for my mother’s harvest to grow, the horrible feeling took root in me.

And now, with Seer’s ashes sifting through my fingers, I know I will never be able to uproot it.

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