And the winners are...

Yes, you are all very clever, I was in Reyjyavik, Iceland, - and it was COLD! So, picked by a random number generator, the winners of the 8 books and lit mags are:

Andrew

Ade

Miriam

Grace

Sursanchari

Sonya

Nora

Miriam

Dear all, please email me your postal address, to taniah(at)gmail(dot)com and I will dispatch your goodies at random!

Sean O'Faolain Winner and Finalists in New Issue of Southword

 

For your holiday reading pleasure, the new issue of Southword journal has just been published with the winner and finalists of the Sean O'Faolain short story contest which I was honoured to judge this year. (See the final results here). The winning story is Eddie by Nikita Neilin and in 2nd place, No Angel by Bernie McGill. I hope you enjoy them, and the four runners-up, as much as I did!

Sean O'Faolain Results - Winners, Shortlist, Longlist

I am delighted to finally be able to announce the full set of results of the 2010 Sean O'Faolain prize, which I awarded to the winner tonight in Cork - and unveil the longlist, which, as I said in an earlier post, really is a great achievement! (please excuse the odd layout, wanted to get this up quickly and the line breaks went haywire!)

The results are:

1^st prize, Eddie by Nikita Nelin

2^nd No Angel by Bernie McGill

Runners up

Ramon Shannon Cain

Big Bitchin' Cow Dave Wilson

The capital of Thailand Serge Shea

Sidetrack Judy Crozier

Highly Commended

Advice and Sandwiches P.G. O’Connor
Advice re Elephants Johathan Pinnock

Boa constrictor Analisa Raya-Flores

Ex-Boyfriend in Prison James Armour Young

Falling Elizabeth Baines
La Cumparsita at Paris Charles de Gaulle Claire King

Mamma Julia Gwynne

Man is Born to Trouble As the Sparks Fly Upwards Terese Svoboda

On the Night South Africa is Effectively Eliminated from the World Cup Liesl Jobson

Sleeping with the Brothers Karamazov Terre Ryan

Sparrow Nora Nadjarian

Afterlife Wes Lee

The Opposite of Fog Sara Kay Rupnik

The Tale End Susan Kim Campbell

We Call This Living; or, Ghosts Mac Barrett

You Would Feel Your Heart Fall Over Sarah Frost Mellor

 Shortlist (in order of story submission):

Advice and sandwiches P.G. O’Connor

No Angel Bernie McGill

Seeing Things Deena Linett

You would feel your heart fall over Sarah Frost Mellor

Red Flyer Tom Bryan

We Call This Living; or, Ghosts Mac Barrett

I Want You to Say It Alin Fenn

The opposite of fog Sara Kay Rupnik

Man is Born to Trouble as the sparks Fly Upwards Terese Svoboda

Falling Elizabeth Baines

Afterlife Wes Lee

Ex-Boyfriend in prison James Armour Young

Sparrow Nora Nadjarian

The Tale End Susan Kim Campbell

Eddie Nikita Nelin

Advice re elephants Johathan Pinnock

Sleeping with the Brothers Karamazov Terre Ryan

Sidetrack Judy Crozier

Big Bitchin' Cow Dave Wilson

Tarts Paul O’ Reilly

Mamma Julia Gwynne

The Capital of Thailand Serge Shea

Ramon Shannon Cain

On the Night South Africa is Effectively Eliminated from the World
Cup Liesl Jobson

La Cumparsita at Paris Charles de Gaulle Claire King

Boa Constrictor Analisa Raya-Flores

Longlist (in order of story submission)


Sunday Afternoon Drop-Off Sarah Shepherd
One of These Days Rachel J. Fenton
Advice and Sandwiches P.G. O’Connor
No Angel Bernie McGill
Tom, Aged 18 Annemarie Neary
Confessional Gail Francis
Wings David Hayden
The Aviary Chaiti Sen
Seeing Things Deena Linett
You would feel your heart fall over Sarah Frost Mellor
Three walnuts Frances Gapper
Night D. Shanahan
All that thinking Alison Wells
Who You love Owen Goodwyne
The X-ray Vision of Augustus Fletcher Christina Joyce Hauser
Red Flyer Tom Bryan
We Call This Living; or, Ghosts Mac Barrett
Filch Alison Wells
I want you to say it Alin Fenn
The Opposite of Fog Sara Kay Rupnik
MAN IS BORN TO TROUBLE AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD Terese Svoboda
SWEET HEALER, GUIDE MY FOOTSTEPS Brian George
The girl and the house bear Kip Robisch
Falling Elizabeth Baines
Afterlife Wes Lee
Living Doll Pauline Masurel
Ex-boyfriend in Prison James Armour Young
Sparrow Nora Nadjarian
The tale end Susan Kim Campbell
Sitting ducks Kathleen Murray
Eddie Nikita Nelin
Advice re elephants Johathan Pinnock

Sleeping with the Brothers Karamazov Terre Ryan

One Way Out Mariad Whisker
Canyon Mary Volmer
Sidetrack Judy Crozier
Big Bitchin' Cow Dave Wilson
Tarts Paul O’ Reilly
Mamma Julia Gwynne
The last songs Benjamin Judge
The capital of thailand Serge Shea
A passage from imagination to reality Anna Delany
Old ma wichello Nicholas Rawlinson
Ramon Shannon Cain
Orchard Véronique Hyland
On the Night South Africa is Effectively Eliminated From the World Cup Liesl Jobson
La Cumparsita at Paris Charles de Gaulle Claire King
Boa constrictor Analisa Raya-Flores

Huge congratulations to everyone who entered, whether or not your name is here!

My judging process or How I read 849 Stories in Two Months

I've finished the judging for the Sean O'Faolain short story competition, sent my decision in on Monday. The longlist will be announced next week, I'll let you know when it's posted. In the meantime, I thought I'd reflect on how it was for me, what I learned as a reader and as a writer.

849 stories. No sifters, no first readers. Just me. I'd heard from previous judges that I should pace myself otherwise I could be overwhelmed! So I did. And although I was getting 100 or so stories at a time - and two large parcels in the post of about 100 printed stories each - I remained mostly calm. It's a joy and a privilege, first to be asked to pick only what I love, and second to have hundreds of writers entrust me with your stories. I don't take that lightly. I've done it myself, many times. You do send out a small piece of you whenever you submit anything. I took that responsibility very seriously.

I am not, of course, going to mention individual stories, nothing like that. But I thought it might be useful - for me and for others - to talk about what it was like to be the sole judge. Of course, each judge is different, each short story competition is different, and most will have readers and only pass on a long- or short-list to the final judge.

What I tried to do when opening or picking up each new story for the first read was to say to the story: "Wow me. Show me what you've got!" and be completely open. At the beginning, as I read the first 100, I was quite nervous. What if I didn't find a single story that I liked? I mean, really, I'm very picky, I read lots and lots of short stories, all the time, and I know what a great story feels like, what it does to you. I was going to settle for nothing less than that physical jolt of a fantastic short story, that slap in the face, that sensation that you simply can't read anything else, you have to stop and digest what you've just read.

As I read, stories started making it into the Maybe pile. These were stories that stood out for various reasons: beautiful use of language, strong character voices that I could hear as I read, unique settings or situations, utterly bizarre plots I felt I had to read again!

The ones that didn't make it into the Maybe pile were those that tended to take a long time to get to any action, to explain too much to me, to overdo it on the background information, to not have a "voice" so that I couldn't hear the character, or to use very flowery language which I felt got in the way rather than enhanced the story. Stories that didn't make the Maybe pile were those that felt as though I'd read them before, somewhere, that they were familiar, too familiar, in terms of storyline or characters.  

Very very few stories made it straight into the Yes pile, and those were the ones that on first read gave me that jolt. No doubt about it. They shook me up. They had everything that, for this reader, makes a great and winning story.

After reading a few hundred of the earliest entries, I had quite a few Maybes and one or two Yesses and so I was feeling far less nervous. I had stories I liked, loved even, and from that point on, while also saying to each story "Wow me", I was also reading with a slightly different eye. As more stories went into the Maybe pile and I realised I had "enough" stories that I liked, I think that I was tougher on the later stories. I asked slightly more of them, I said to them "So, how are you better than the ones I already like?" And as I got closer and closer to the last of the entries, this probably became more exacerbated, as I imagine it would for anybody.

I don't believe that this meant I gave less consideration to the later-submitted entries. Every story got equal consideration. But it is an inevitable part of a process like this. One way to completely avoid this might have been to wait until all the entries were in and then read them in random order, unrelated to when they were submitted. But that would have meant reading 849 stories in one week - and that would have been impossible!

However, on second read, things changed. I was going back and re-reading the Maybes, and the earlier entries were now being read in light of the later entries! So the process was balanced out. Several Maybes were moved to the No pile, and then I had my longlist, and it includes stories that were sent all throughout the entry period.

I then began the next stage, reading the few Yesses and the Maybes again and assigning each a score. This seemed to me to be the only way to try and narrow the list down. I didn't have a very elaborate scoring system, it was more of a gut reaction to each story. And on second read, not all the Yesses stayed in the Yes pile. I was looking for a story that gave up more of itself with every read - a story that has layers, that remains fabulous even when you know how it ends. This, for me, is the mark of a great story. There were several I had adored on first read but on second read, the magic, the jolt, just wasn't there. 

Anyway, narrowing it down was incredibly hard. All the longlisted stories wowed and delighted me in some way. All of them. Really, getting onto my longlist was the major achievement because it meant that a story leapt out at me from amongst hundreds. 

So, what made the move from longlist to shortlist? Much of it was down to those extremely difficult aspects of a story: beginnings and endings. In a few instances, stories had quite slow beginnings, they took too long, in my opinion, to get to the action. Once they got there, the story was great, but they needed a bit more revision. In other cases, endings let a story down. The story had gripped me, the voice was great, but I'd felt that the ending didn't satisfy me, didn't give me any kind of jolt. 

And what of the winners? Well, that was really really hard. In the end, all I could do was go with my gut feeling. It was so close, between all of the top stories. But the 1st and 2nd placed stories were the ones that brought me to tears as I read them again and again, they just had that power. I felt that they addressed so many themes so well and concisely, without labouring a point, and there was really nothing in there that wasn't in the service of the story, nothing extraneous. They both used language beautifully, with rhythm. And they had an oddness that I found very appealing but they were completely consistent within the odd worlds they created. 

I am sure that a different judge would have picked different winners. Maybe a similar longlist, I don't know, but I chose a winner that I felt really reflected my personal short story tastes, what I love to read. You'll get to read all six top stories in the next issue of Southword, so you can judge for yourself!

Is there anything you - and I - can take from this as writers? Well, here's the big one: to catch the eye of a judge - or a sifter - you have to do just that. Be eye-catching. Be DIFFERENT. But, and here's the hard thing, not gratuitously different. Not whizz-bang-let-off-fireworks different. Being different can be very very quiet. Being different can mean tackling the same theme - love and relationships, family dynamics, etc... - in a way that only you can do in your writing. Catch the judge's eye with your love for language. Or with a character who has such a distinctive voice from the first line that the reader is dying to find out more about him and what happens to him. 

Does a story submitted to a competition have to be different from one submitted to a literary journal? Now that's a very good question. It's been floated that there are "winning stories", that a competition winner is somehow more polished, better crafted. Well, I can only speak for myself but in the three comps I've judged this year, I wasn't interested in polish and craft. I'd far rather read a slightly messy and somewhat confusing story that took risks than a very neat story that plays it safe. 

I think, reading back over this blog post, that in fact none of it is very useful! I can't generalise much about anything. I still know what I love to read and what I don't. But there is never any way of knowing what a competition judge loves to read. As I mentioned a few months ago, I definitely don't love only the kinds of stories I write. 

So, in conclusion: write only what you want to write. Write only what you have to write. If you get longlisted, well that means you caught the judge's eye. If you don't that means that the judge liked other kinds of stories. Don't be disheartened. Send it out again. I'm happy to be back to doing that myself. I just sent 6 stories in to 2 flash fiction competitions. Will my experience as a judge help when they fail to get anywhere? I'm not sure, it will still sting. But I'll just send them out again.

Winners of The White Road & Other Stories!

No time now to talk about the Oxfam Readathon, which was really fun yesterday, but here are the winners of the 3 copies of The White Road & Other Stories I am giving away in honour of Flash! All were picked using this Random Number Generator...

Jo - Day 1 Flash

Marisa - Day 2

Dorothee - Day 3

Congratulations all! Please send me your postal addresses by email (taniah@gmail.com) and I will get those out to you! 

Congratulations!

Just a quick blog post to say a HUGE congratulations to my great friends and fabulous writers (and Salt authors) Carys Davies and Susannah Rickards - Carys is the winner and Susannah one of two runners-up (with Frank O'Connor award-winner Simon Van Booy) of the highly prestigious Society of Authors Olive Cook award!

To read more of Carys' stories, get hold of her book, Some New Ambush (Salt). Susannah's collection will be published by Salt later this year. (Read a review of Simon Van Booy's Love Begins in Winter on The Short Review)

Brief news from me: A lovely lovely meeting with the Clifton Library Book Group where I heard that wonderful line which I never tire of hearing: "I never normally read short stories, but now that I've read your book...." They bought 6 copies, which is an added bonus, it is just wonderful to sit and chat about stories in general with such an interested and fascinating group of readers. 

I also had a great time at the Bristol Festival of Nature - the University asked me to write two flash stories, one for each of the University tents at the festival - and they printed them out with spaces for kids to illustrate the stories. An interesting experience; I don't write for kids so tried to at least make it not unsuitable for children. I hope it was vaguely successful! I was there at the Festival, encouraging kids  - and their parents - to do some drawing. It was fun!

And I forgot to mention the excellent Waterstone's Brighton event for 100 Stories for Haiti last week (long long week) - it was a moving occasion, a true tribute and proof of how one man -in this case Greg McQueen - can and is making a difference. If you don't have your copy, find out more here. All proceeds to the Red Cross efforts in Haiti.






I've had some interesting invites in the last two days but can't say anything yet. More soon!

A quickie

I haven't felt much like blogging recently, not had that much to say. So this is me saying not much at all. Lovely to see everyone at the Willesden Herald event at the weekend, see Women Rule Writer and Vanessa G for pics. Huge congrats to Wena, the competition winner (read a recent interview I did with Wena here), and all the other shortlisted writers, including Women Rule Writer (aka Nuala) and Tom "How to Write a Novel" Vowler (lovely to meet you!).

I just wanted to say that I am still adding to my Ever-Growing List of UK &  Ireland Lit Mags that Publish Short Stories and as of today there are 108 publications. New ones keep cropping up. So get those stories out of your (virtual) drawer, give them a shine and send them off! Go on.
 

Bridport congrats...and...flash!

It's just wonderful to know people who win things, especially things as fabulous as the Bridport Prize for short stories, which receives thousands of entries every year. Last year, my great friend Elaine Chiew was the winner, the year before, Vanessa scooped second place. And this year I am delighted to see three names I know in the winners of supplementary prizes: huge congratulations to Anna Britten, Nicholas Hogg and Teresa Stenson! And there are more familiar names in the shortlist: Jill Widner, Carolyn Jess-Cooke, Kate Clanchy (whose stunning VS Prichett prize-winning story I just read in Prospect), D Norris. Of course, enormous congratulations to the winners, Jenny Clarkson,  Natasha Soobramanien and N Nye, it's a fantastic achievement, especially with a judge whose short stories are as breathtaking as Ali Smith.

And there's more.... did the eagle-eyed spot an addition to the Bridport Prize website for 2010? On the side menu, under Short Stories and Poetry is...


Flash fiction!!!

This makes me very very very happy. It says something about the status of flash fiction, for one, since this is the world's richest open writing prize (open because it doesn't require an entrant to have been previously published, and it is judged anonymously), and it also thrills me personally since flash fiction is what I love to write and love to read - and it takes the pressure off all those of us who don't write stories that are longer than 1000 words or so. The judge hasn't been announced yet... will keep you updated.  Yippee!!


Addendum: I just saw that Regi Claire, whose short story collection, Fighting It, we reviewed in The Short Review and who is published by Two Ravens Press, is shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Awards, Scotland's major literary awards, alongside AL Kennedy, whose short story collection What Becomes is on my review pile,  and Janice Galloway, whose Collected Stories is also waiting for me. Congratulations, Regi, and more power to the short story!

A few congratulations

Lots of wonderful things happening all round.

First, congratulations to Elizabeth Baines for winning third prize in the Raymond Carver short story contest. Her story, Used to Be, can be read online here. It is stunning, it blew me away, I was literally on the edge of my seat, staring into my screen. I hate reading from the screen, but this story gripped me so absolutely.

Second, congrats to my writing mate Michelle Tandoc-Pichereau for being shortlisted for the Sean O' Faolain short story competition. There were over 700 entries, and Michelle made the final ten, a wonderful achievement.

Congratulations also to Joel for making the shortlist of the Mere Literary Festival, Frances for being one of the finalists in the We Are Many competition, Sarah Hilary for winning a place in the Fish July micro-fiction showcase. And to Douglas, one of the finalists of the Kelpie's Prize 2008, whose novel will be published by Floris Books.

This is what makes being a writer worthwhile - each of these wins, these hits, is accompanied by many, many rejections, and, as I have said before, that's the way it has to be. The sting of the rejection just makes the sweetness of an acceptance even deeper. Well done all!