new writing...

There is shortly to be some non-me-me-me activity on this blog (I hear you cheer!) but for the moment, sorry, still me, in brief - delighted to have had a poem longlisted for The Rialto's Nature poetry competition! Also delighted to have a new piece of oddness up on Visual Verse (which is such a lovely 'zine, why don't you have a go?), another outing for an older flash on FlashFiction.net and four stories on MexicoCityLit in advance of my work trip to Mexico (more on that soon!) - and, for the next 30 days (perhaps?) me reading newly-commisioned food-related flash fiction and poetry -  in the fine and wonderful company of Simon Panrucker and Barny Houghton -  on Michael Rosen's Radio 4 show, Word of Mouth!

Bare Fiction prizes

 

So, I am one of the short story judges for this fine slew of prizes from the very fine lit mag Bare Fiction. The fabulous Rachel Trezise and I will be reading your short stories, and the wonderful Adam Horovitz is all over the poetry, while the excellent Angela Readman wants your tiny wordthings. Do check out the guidelines here. Really refreshing to see the same amount of money to be won in all categories - nothing privilieged above everything else due to form or word count. Nice.

And lest you think I spend my time only on the judgemental side of the fence, tis not true, because I'm fortunate enough to have had two poems longlisted for a poetry comp, and they will be included in the competition anthology - regardless of what happens next with shortlists and so on, so yippee! I have said it before, will say it again - longlists are not to be sniffed at. As a judge, I know that it's often the greatest leap from large pile to longlist, and the tiniest of steps from that onwards, so I am delighted! Good luck to everything you bravely send out into the world! I would be delighted to read some of it.

New story and some poetry news

I'm really thrilled to have a brand new story, "War Games" in the Summer Fiction issue of the Wales Arts Review, published today. It's a story I started in Nov 2012 and finished a few months ago, and I'm so happy it's found such a great home, alongside an amazing line-up: Anna Metcalfe, Jon Gower, Gee Williams, Orflaith Foyle, Lauren Oyler, Joel Smith, Noah Cicero, Mark Blayney, Ric Bower, Craig Austin, John Lavin and Gary Raymond. Check out the magazine here.

I was also recently longlisted for the Short Fiction journal competition for another new story, congrats to the 4 shortlisted writers: Elizabeth Baines, Catherine McNamara, Geoffrey Miller and Graham Mort!

And the past month has been a great boost for a fledgling poet - I had two poems longlisted and one shortlisted for the Wirral Festival of Firsts poetry competition, and my pamphlet longlisted for the Flarestack poetry pamphlet prize. Have been grapping with the poetry "no simultaneous submissions" rules for many comps - someone needs to come up with an algorithm for this! - and sending the poems back out, and out again. For, as I said recently on Twitter, this much I know: if you don't send anything out, magic can't happen. Go on, give the magic a chance!

Longlisted

I am thrilled to be on the longlist for the 2014 Short Fiction Journal story comp - my story, God Glows, is one that I started in June 2011, finished two years later, and it is 3300 words long. For me, that's LONG, a bit out of my comfort zone so, as I've said here before, this longlisting, whatever happens next (shortlist announced beginning July) this is a real boost - at the very least, I know that someone liked it and thinks it is actually a short story!

Congrats to the whole longlist! Here it is:

‘Lucy’ – Dallin Kapp

‘The Glover’ – Graham Mort

‘The Line’ – Dan Moreau’

‘Finish with the Rose’ – Perry Glasser

‘The Haughty Corpse’ – James Lark

‘The Butterfly Collector’s Wife’ – Holly Dawson

‘The Empty House’ – Jill Widner

‘The River Troll’ – Alison Fisher

‘The Seven Pathways to Resettlement’ – Andrew Neilson

‘God Glows’ – Tania Hershman

‘Critical State’ – Osama Ammar

‘Feathers’ – Ben Cribbin

‘Adieu, Mon Doux Rivage’ – Catherine McNamara

‘Looking for the Castle’ – Elizabeth Baines

‘Dragonflies’ – Geoffrey Miller

‘Borders’ – Angela Sherlock

‘Flipsy’ – Sean McArdell

‘Obsolescence’ – Joseph Mackertich

‘Au Naturel’ – Sara Mae Tuson

‘Thirteen Lies’ – Anne Corlett

Poetry longlisting!

So, my year of poetry is going pretty well - my poem Me and Elvis Presley on Dartmoor, has been longlisted for the Gregory O'Donogue poetry prize! Congratulations to the winner, Judith Barrington, the other prize winners, the commended and the longlisted, I am in fine company!

Flash Slam & Bristol Short Story Prize Longlist

 I had a fantastic time as the guest "commentator" at the National Flash Fiction Day flash fiction slam last Wed in Oxford! Thanks so much to the inimitable Dan Holloway for organising, lovely to meet Twitter friends Pete Domican (who blogged about it here), Emily Cleaver and Sue Howe and see old mate Jon Pinnock, all of whom read beautifully, and Rebecca Emin, who judged beautifully! And huge congrats to flash slam winner Kevlin Henney - who read beautifully too, and entertained us immensely! He was in a very good mood the whole way home to Bristol, where he kindly dropped me off. A wonderful night had by all! Roll on next year's NFFD!

In other good news, the longlist for the Bristol Short Story Prize was announced today: 40 stories were longlisted out of a total of 2,304 entries. Some familiar names, many new to me!
  2012 Bristol Short Story Prize longlist:

Eugenia Will Come Back To You Someday – Kaj Anderson-Bauer (USA)
Naked As Eve – John Arnold (Australia)
Running to Nuthin’ – Lewis Bardsley (England)
Unearthed – Catherine Bokkers (The Netherlands)
The Swimmer – Lizzie Boyle (England)
Between Sea and Shore – Darci Bysouth (Scotland)
Dreams of Flying – Alexandra Carey (England)
Lobster – Alys Conran ( Wales)
Inked – Neil Durrant (Australia)
The Angel of the Warmth – Rachel J Fenton (New Zealand)
Time – Clare Fisher (England)
Battleground – Lisa Frank (Ireland)
Keith Morris is a Royal Plum – Martin Cathcart Froden (Scotland)
Something Somewhere Went Wrong – Sarah Gilmartin (Ireland)
People Like Her – Kerry Hood (England)
Apple Shot – Tracey Iceton (England)
Nice Blokes – Brian Jennings (England)
Meat – Avril Joy (England)
Dark Matter – Magda Knight (England)
Last Days of the Unicorn  - Danielle McLaughlin (Ireland)
On The Day Weldon Kees Disappeared – Alan Mumford (England)
Flashpoint – Susan Murray (England)
Heaven on the Horizon – Noel O’Regan (Ireland)
Ghost in the Machine – Christopher Parvin ( England)
Sharks, Choices – Matt Plass (England)
Horses – Thomas Pyner (England)
Yoki and the Toy Surprise – Angela Readman (England)
Going Grapefruit – Ian Richards (England)
Beekiller – Ethel Rohan (USA)
Forty-Five RPM in Chicago – Derek Routledge (Wales)
Senile – Safia Shah (England)
The Bird – Samantha Short (England)
The Attack at Delium – William Telford (England)
Mackerel for Tea – Rhoda Thompson (England)
Jelly Feel Real – Ellie Walsh (England)
After the Flood – Melanie Whipman ( England)
I Once Knew Salman Rushdie - Hilary Wilce (England)
The Life of Ethan – Emily Williamson (England)
Flowers on the Flagstone – Mairi Wilson (Scotland)
Symmetry – Samuel Wright  (England)


Highly Commended:
Crik Crak – E.L. Appleby ( England)
The Homecoming – Cait Atherton (Thailand)
And the Sea Gave Up Its Dead - Faith Barnes (Wales)
The Swanrite – Phillip Belcher
Last Wednesday – Cristina Burduja (England)
Stillness Comes – Michael John Burrows  (Canada)
Transition – Holly Corfield Carr (England)
Beautiful Horizon – Sharda Dean (England)
White – Mark Dixon (England)
Living – Samuel Dodson (England)
For Gracie – Ruth Driscoll (England)
Glimmer – Kat Ellis (Wales)
Vitiligo – Jo Else (England)
A Death in the Family – Kathleen English (England)
The Beginning – Louise Gethin  (England)
Where Steamers Wait... – T.D. Griggs (England)
Soap Opera in a Red Camaro – Norma Harrs (Canada)
A Young Country – Joanna Herrmann (England)
Angel Eggs – Nydia Hetherington ( England)
The Genitals and the Soul – David B Huebert (Canada)
Confessions of a Pigeon Feeder – Charlotte Humphries (England)
Puddings in the Park – Clair Humphries (England)
Lally – Tina Jackson  (England)
The Wish Improvement Mechanism – Amy Kellam (England)
Detective Noir – Ryan Anthony Licata (England)
Yellow River – Karen Lindsay
The Lady Bandit – Kelly Matsuura (Japan)
The Novel Factory – Luke Melia (England)
Geminids – Will Miles (England)
Sweetness – Lorraine Nevin (South Africa)
You Always Hurt – Michael Nicholson (England)
The Elephant Sun – Emyr Payne (Wales)
Frank Has Weeds – Mike Pym (England)
Greasbys – Olivia Rana (Northern Ireland)
Flight of Fancy – Mary Reynolds ( Ireland)
White Witch – Don Roy (Canada)
Afternoon Lullaby – Susha Chandra Ryner  ( England)
Craving – Erics Sail (England)
Moving In – Janet Swinney (England)
A Dance in the Bomb Shelter – Steven Tizzard


Congrats to all, fingers crossed for the shortlist!

2012 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award Longlist

I'm in Edinburgh for 2 weeks- more on that shortly. But in the meantime, what a thrill that my soon-to-be-published second collection, My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions, has been longlisted for the 2012 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award! As you will see below, it is a looong longlist, because most of the eligible collections make the longlist. Am I despairing in the face of such competition for the €25,000? Nope. I am rejoicing! A few years ago, the longlist had 40 or so books, now it has around 75... so this means either that more short story collections are being published, or that more publishers know about the prize and are submitting - or BOTH, and both those things make me very happy!

And it's an honour to be on a list that includes several friends - A J Ashworth, Nuala Ni Chonchúir, Charles Christian, Orflaith Foyle, Mary Costello, and some of my favourite writers - Joyce Carol Oates, Nathan Englander, Tessa Hadley (who taught me on the Bath Spa MA), Diane Williams, Steve Almond, Etgar Keret, Don de Lillo, Jo McGregor.... Am I predicting the shortlist? I hope not, I hope to be surprised! I will be at the Cork International Short Story Festival in September where the prize is presented anyway, teaching flash fiction workshops (see the Festival workshops brochure) and reading from the new book, so I look forward to meeting the shortlisted writers (and hoping I'm not too starstruck...)

So, here's the list - an excellent starting point if you're looking to enrich your bookshelves (real or virtual, I must add, as a new Kindle user... aaargh). Many I've not heard of, and I keep both ears to the ground when it comes to short story collections, so I'm delighted. Links are to those we've already reviewed in The Short Review - of anyone wants to offer to review any of the others, please email (editor (at) theshortreview (dot) com)! Good luck to all, shortlist announced in June.

Steve Almond, God Bless America, Lookout Books, USA

A. J. Ashworth, Somewhere Else, or Even Here, Salt Publishing, UK

Diane Awerbuck, Cabin Fever, Umuzi, South Africa

Lou Beach, 420 Characters, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, USA

Frank Bill, Crimes in Southern Indiana, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, USA

Will Boast, Power Ballads, University of Iowa Press, USA

Greg Bottoms, Swallowing the Past, Texas Review Press, USA

Laura Boudreau, Suitable Precautions, Biblioasis, Canada

Shannon Cain, The Necessity of Certain Behaviors, University of Pittsburgh Press, USA

Neil Campbell, Pictures from Hopper, Salt Publishing, UK

Eileen Casey, Snow Shoes, Arlen House, Ireland

O Thiam Chin, The Rest of Your Life and Everything That Comes With It, ZI Publications, Singapore

Charles Christian, This is the Quickest Way Down, Proxima, UK

Dave Chua, The Beating, Ethos Books, Singapore

K. L. Cook, Love Songs for the Quarantined, Willow Springs Editions, USA

Mary Costello, The China Factory, The Stinging Fly Press, Ireland

Eugene Cross, Fires of Our Choosing, Dzanc Books, USA

Don DeLillo, The Angel Esmeralda, Picador, USA

Stanley Donwood, Household Worms, Tangent Books, UK

Catherine Eisner, Listen Close to Me, Salt Publishing, UK

Nathan Englander, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Alfred A. Knopf, USA

Matthew Firth, Shag Carpet Action, Anvil Press, Canada

Órfhlaith Foyle, Somewhere in Minnesota, Arlen House, Ireland

Matthew Francis, Singing a Man to Death, Cinnamon Press, UK

David Galef, My Date With Neanderthal Woman, Dzanc Books, USA

Dagoberto Gilb, Before the End, After the Beginning, Grove Press, USA

Namita Gokhale, The Habit of Love, Penguin Group, India

Lorna Goodison, By Love Possessed, HarperCollins Publishers, Jamaica

Daniel Griffin, Stopping for Strangers, Véhicule Press, Canada

Tessa Hadley, Married Love, Jonathan Cape, UK

Sarah Hall, The Beautiful Indifference, Faber and Faber, UK

Hanjum Hasan, Difficult Pleasures, Penguin Group, India

Tania Hershman, My Mother Was an Upright Piano, Tangent Books, UK

Keith Jardim, Near Open Water, Peepal Tree Press, USA

James Martyn Joyce, What’s not Said, Arlen House, Ireland

Suzanne Kamata, The Beautiful One Has Come, Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, USA

Jackie Kay, Reality, Reality, Picador, UK

Etgar Keret, Suddenly, a Knock in the Door, Chatto & Windus, Israel

Fiona Kidman, The Trouble With Fire, Random House, New Zealand

Zoe Lambert, The War Tour, Comma Press, UK

Krys Lee, Drifting House, Faber and Faber, USA – South Korea

Adam Levin, Hot Pink, McSweeney’s, USA

Peter Markus, We Make Mud, Dzanc Books, USA

Rowena Mcdonald, Smoked Meat, Flambard Press, UK

Jon McGregor, This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You, Bloomsbury, UK

K. R. Meera, Yellow Is the Colour of Longing, Penguin Group, India

Ana Menendez, Adios, Happy Homeland!, Grove Press, USA

Clemens Meyer, All the Lights, And Other Stories, Germany

Kevin Moffett, Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events, HarperCollins Publishers, USA

Jim Mullarkey, And, Doire Press, Ireland

Sabina Murray, Tales of the New World, Grove Press, Australia

Stuart Nadler, The Book of Life, Picador, USA

Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Mother America, New Island, Ireland

Éllis Ní Dhuibne, Shelter of Neighbours, Blackstaff Press, Ireland

Joyce Carol Oates, The Corn Maiden, Grove Press, USA

Rajesh Parameswaran, I Am an Executioner, Bloomsbury, USA

Cassandra Parkin, New World Fairy Tales, Salt Publishing, UK

Lucia Perillo, Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain, W. W. Norton & Company, USA

Dave Pescod, All Embracing, Route, UK

Alice Petersen, All the Voices Cry, Biblioasis, Canada

Stephanie Powell Watts, We Are Taking Only What We Need, BkMk Press, USA

Wayne Price, Furnace, Freight Books, UK

Stephanie Reents, The Kissing List, Hogarth, USA

Rebecca Rosenblum, The Big Dream, Biblioasis, Canada

Pamela Ryder, A Tendency to Be Gone, Dzanc Books, USA

Nathalie Serber, Shout Her Lovely Name, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, USA

Johanna Skibsrud, This Will Be Difficult to Explain, W. W. Norton Company/ Hamish Hamilton, Canada

Yasuko Thanh, Floating Like the Dead, McClelland & Stewart, Canada

Lysley Tenorio, Monstress, HarperCollins Publisher, USA-Philippines

Laura Maylene Walter, Living Arrangements, BkMk Press, USA

Diane Williams, Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty, McSweeney’s, USA

D. W. Wilson, Once You Break a Knuckle, Bloomsbury/ Hamish Hamilton, Canada

Lucy Wood, Diving Belles, Bloomsbury, UK

Barbara Unković, Moon Walking, Old Line Publishing, Croatia

Dina Zaman, King of the Sea, Silverfish Books, Malaysia

Sunday Times EFG Private Bank short story award longlist

The longlist for the £30,000 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank short story award has been announced - 10 women, 10 men, ranging in age from 31 to 94, apparently! Congratulations to all - especially my friend Alison MacLeod!

Diana Athill - 'A Hopeless Case'
Kevin Barry - 'Beer Trip to Llandudno'
Evgenia Citkowitz - 'Business Class'
Will Cohu - 'Two Bad Thumbs'
Emma Donoghue - 'The Hunt'
Jackie Kay - 'These Are Not My Clothes'
A L Kennedy - 'Late in Life'
Jean Kwok - 'Where the Gods Fly'
Barrie de Lara - 'Dinner at Benutti's'
Tom Lee - 'The Current'
Toby Litt - 'The Sandy'
Alison MacLeod - 'The Heart of Denis Noble'
Martin Malone - 'Valley of the Peacock Angel'
Robert Minhinnick - 'El Aziz: Some Pages From His Notebooks'
Linda Oatman High - 'Nickel Mines Hardware'
Alison Pimlott - 'Five Year Diary'
Tamara Pollock - 'Elsa'
Alex Preston - 'The Bridge Over Shuto Expressway No. 1'
Lionel Shriver - 'Prepositions'
Johanna Skibsrud - 'Fat Man and Little Boy'

It's wonderful to see Big Names rubbing shoulders with names I don't recognise, I'm eager to find out more about the stories... how about an anthology of all 20 longlisted stories, Sunday Times & EFG?

2011 Sunday Times EFG longlist is out!

The longlist for the £20,000 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award - the richest prize for a single story (although only open to published writers) - has just been announced. An interesting list, it seems on first glance to be that there are more Big Names on it this year, maybe the Big Names realised that this is a serious amount of money and it would be foolish not to go in for it! Delighted to see Short Review authors Rob Shearman and Clare Wigfall there, along with Kevin Barry and Yiyun Li. Here's the full longlist:

• Fabian Acker 'Nirvana'
• Kevin Barry 'Fjord of Killary'
• Meira Chand 'The Pilgrimage'
• Will Cohu 'East West-West Coast'
• Anthony Doerr 'The Deep'
• Michel Faber 'In the Woods with a Dead Dog'
• Roshi Fernando 'The Fluorescent Jacket'
• Tibor Fischer 'Possibly Forty Ships'
• Xiaolu Guo 'Life by Accident'
• Sarah Hall 'Vuotjarvi'
• Tobias Hill 'Not that it Matters'
• Susan Hill 'Crystal'
• Yiyun Li 'The Science of Flight'
• Hilary Mantel 'Comma'
• David Miller 'Fuck Being Happy'
• Robert Shearman 'History Becomes You'
• Erin Soros 'BC Almanac'
• Louise Stern 'Black and White Dog'
• Gerard Woodward 'The Family Whistle'
• Claire Wigfall 'Professor Arvind'

You can read more about the longlisted authors here. I am particularly intrigued by Fabien Acker, who won "the BT award as science writer of the year", and Yiyun Li's story, because it has science in the title! Good luck to them all, the shortlist will be announced in a few weeks.

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!

Guest blog post on Tomlit

First, just to let you know, I will be publishing the Sean O'Faolain prize longlist here on my blog after the winner has been announced, in 2 weeks.

Second, I am delighted to be a guest on the Tomlit blog today, talking about trust between a writer and a reader. I wrote this post, "It's All About Trust", a few months ago, it was interesting for me to re-read it given the 849 entries I just read for the S O'F! Here's a snippet:

I don't read to relax, not in that same way. I don't read to be entertained, to watch the story unfold. I read to become engaged with the story, to have it enter me, grip me and twist my insides. I want to be changed by what I have read. If it is all there for me, laid out in front of my eyes, where is my place inside this story or novel? What is the role of my imagination if everything is handed to me on a plate?

 Read the rest of the blog post.

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.