BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award... Top Ten

Further to my post last week on the 2008 BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Awards 2008 , I received an email this evening... Apparently my story ('Oh! So Careless') was in the top ten in the Open Section. So, from top novice last year to top ten among the big kids this year. I'll take that.

Here's what the judge, Peter Wells, had to say:

“Overall, I looked at more than 230 stories so a good story really had to stand out. The nine finalists caught my attention. Sometimes a story grabs you with its content, but usually it is the combination of content and style. There were many stories which seemed thinly disguised memoir. I didn’t feel this with the nine finalists: they seemed self sufficient stories in their own right. Each writer had gone that extra mile to make the story stand out. Even the title is important - it’s like looking at a menu and from what’s written you have to imagine the taste. I think the nine finalists could improve their work by reading short stories by acclaimed writers - people as various as Tolstoy, Elizabeth Bowen, Alice Munro as well as contemporary short story writers who appear each week in the New Yorker magazine, for example. It’s not an easy artform at all. And we all learn and become more enthusiastic about the short story by reading the great writers. But each of the finalists should feel heartened by the fact, in a such a big public competition, their work stood out. What separated their work from the winning entry? I would say the winning entry had more observation of the foibles of the way we interact as humans. It was quietly, even sardonically humorous. It was well tailored overall. Sometimes, strangely enough, if you relax with the medium, ie not necessarily try to tell 'big stories', you come up with a better result. But be encouraged. And dream up further stories.”

Since my last post, the three winning stories have been posted on the BNZ's site. I've read them. Novitz's story probably does observe more foibles than mine... And his title is probably a better menu entry... Though I'm not sure, if given a contents page of twenty stories I'd turn to a story called 'Three Couples' first (or fifth).

More on reading habits and contents pages tomorrow.

BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards 2008

It's official. I am no longer the reigning Novice champion of the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Competition. That honour now belongs to Joseph Ryan.

Story here.

Congrats to Julian Novitz for winning the open category and joining "the literary heavyweights".

I haven't seen the stories up on the BNZ site just yet... if you go searching, you'll still find my story, Another Language. How unfortunate.

If you hurry, you might still be able to watch this video cobbled together with footage from the 2007 awards and, if I'm not mistaken, 2001. I was in Germany during the 2007 ceremony, but you can see my mum standing next to Carl Nixon at 1:04-1:10. Go mum!

Okay, off to see Ladyhawke at Cabaret Voltaire... Got to support those 80's obsessed Kiwis, eh?

A.W.O.L. Competitions

I don’t enter many writing competitions. Only the free ones. And I almost never write a bespoke piece to enter a given competition. But back in January, when writing 2,700+ words a day was both fresh and daunting, I came across details for The Scotsman and National Library of Scotland Short Story Competition.

I’d never written a pure crime fiction short story, though I did have a crime fiction element in the pastiche that was my second attempt at a novel (a.k.a. MA thesis, a.k.a. The City We Forgot To Name).

Anyway, I thought having a stab at this competition would a) net me some words for the final accounting, b) take me somewhere new, and c) give me a chance to win some kudos and whisky.

The story I submitted was called, ‘The Bartender’s Glass’. It was okay, I think. It’s been a while since I read it. I sent it off well before the Jan 25 deadline…

The competition stated that all short listed authors would get a Crime Fiction Masterclass with Mr Tartan Noir himself, Ian Rankin. The entry form stated this Masterclass would take place in March.

Tomorrow it will be May, and I have not heard anything about this competition. Not that I expected to be short-listed, but if the competition has been judged and announced, I expect to either be informed (I supplied my email and mailing address), or in the very least, to be able to find who the winner was on the internet.

Nada.

Last week I emailed the National Library of Scotland (using an alias… somehow everything I wrote came out sounding like a desperate writer with nothing else to think about).

No reply.

I haven’t read the Scotsman (one of Edinburgh’s two evening papers) every day since the first of March, so I can’t be sure I haven’t missed something there, but still…

I hate it when competitions disappear.

What I think might have happened: allowing only six weeks to read and judge the entries, inform the short listed authors and have a Masterclass was overly optimistic. The process may have been further extended when Ian Rankin went off the rails at an awards ceremony earlier this month.

Awards ceremony? Could it… No, it was in London. But still. I can’t help feeling I could have been the 26-year-old writer who spent the night with him…

If only I were a bit older…

And had different bits…

[I love how the story of Rankin’s indiscretion was buried on the Scotsman’s site (and probably never made the paper proper); it really is the Rankin Times.]

If this mythical Masterclass ever eventuates, and I happen to be invited, I’ll be watching the interaction between Master and Pupil closely… the young, female pupils especially. That is, if any young, attractive females write crime fiction.

If anyone out there knows what happened to this competition, I’d love to hear. Until then, I’ll assume I suck at crime fiction and stick to what I know best:

“A young male walks into a bar…”

---

Edit: Found the results today (13 May 08), though it looks like it was all resolved a month earlier. I just was googling the wrong things (like the actual name of the competition...). Only read the winning story so far. Um...

The Last Word on Willesden

For completeness, here's the final word from the Willesden Short Story Competition judges.

It explains the judging process, the mix-up with the short-listed authors, and reiterates the rationale behind the judgement. Perhaps more of this detail and less of the "call to greatness" first up would have prevented upsetting some people...

The short-listed candidates were contacted and asked whether they wanted their names to appear. Some comments made on the comments page of the blog about these writers were so unflattering that it was decided that the WH should be sensitive to their feelings... When the decision was made to split the prize money, the short-listed writers were contacted again and most of them said that they did not want their names or stories to appear and did not want any prize money. They told us to f--- off. Which is fair enough.

All a bit of a storm in a tea cup really. Or in the modern parlance: "something to blog about."

I certainly wouldn't have turned down the money and the publicity, no matter how adverse. No one can be summed up by one story. Thankfully - otherwise what would my non-shortlisted entry say about me?

Willesden Update

From the Willesden Herald blog:

Bowing to common fury, the prize will be split equally amongst the shortlist, all of whom have written strong and worthy stories. Our honest problem was that we didn't feel we had found a stand-out for the big prize, and we were trying to set the highest standard, but we did it clumsily and, as many have argued, there's no reason not to award the money, since it's there. Maybe you lot can read them when they're up and choose your own favourite.

There were only two or three comments suggesting a split. Personally I think it sends the wrong message. They wanted to stir things up. To agitate us all to greatness (or their idea of greatness... slippery slope). But now... what? I'm confused.

I think those involved mistook healthy online debate with whining. Easy mistake to make I guess. For those wondering, this is the former. Honest.

Still, these two competing decisions (no stand-out story so no prize awarded; no stand-out story so ten prizes awarded) don't do any favours for the prestige of the competition this year and going forward.

Congrats to the short-listed writers, though. Any placing, in any fashion, has to be taken as a positive. The "You're good, but go further" message may even spur them on to "greatness". Maybe they're already there, it just flew over Zadie's head?

The Affair of the Willesden Short Story Competition

That's what this would be called if written by Arthur Conan Doyle.

I sat down this evening with the best intentions to write fiction. I opened up the Excel spreadsheet in which I track my stories, their status (complete, in progress, not begun) and the wheres and whens of submissions. Scanning my growing list I was reminded that I entered the Willesden Short Story Prize back in December. I hadn’t heard anything yet, so I googled around and wound up here.

Perhaps I have a sixth sense for controversy?

To summarise: after receiving 800 entries, short-listing and handing X number of stories to Zadie Smith to make the final judgement, it was announced today that no story was good enough to award the prize (£5000 and “immortality” as they said in the conditions of entry).

According to comments on the Willesden Herald’s blog, they actually posted a message a few days ago saying the short listed authors had been notified… And now this.

It was a free competition. Apart from printing and postage costs, which all but one person would not have recouped if a winner had been announced, so there’s really no issue there.

[Except the claim that the prize next year will be this year’s £5000 plus a year’s interest, which would only make the average prize-money £2500+interest over the two years… surely they could up the £s next year, or spend it on promotion to get the best entries out there for 09 rather than banking it for a couple extra hundred pounds…]

Zadie Smith makes some interesting points in her explanation for the prize being withheld, and I can’t really argue that it’s their right to not award the prize if they didn’t read “greatness”.

But:

In the same diatribe-cum-apology, Zadie Smith talks about the aims of the competition as supporting unpublished writers. I wonder how many PUBLISHED stories Zadie Smith and the other judges would read to find one “great” story? Of course a free competition will have some chaff, but to expect “greatness” in a short story competition might be overstating the competition’s importance. Especially one “established to support unpublished writers.” Few writers achieve greatness without first passing through mediocrity, promise, proficiency…
I can understand why they wouldn't want to send the message that proficiency was enough, but if the competition and its organisers really want to help usher writers towards greatness, how about some specific critiques? I’d be particularly interest to hear how the short-listed entries fell short…

As I re-read Ms Smith’s carefully chosen, agonised-over, words, I started to see a subtext.

“I think there are few prizes of this size that would have the integrity not to award a prize when there is not sufficient cause to do so.”

Add to this the repeated references to this prize not being sponsored by a beer company, it’s difficult not to consider whether this is less about the stories received and the writers who submitted than upping the prestige of the prize and the people involved…

But it would be simplistic and misanthropic to say this decision was a cynical marketing ploy. It was a combination of less-than-great stories, the desire to get better stories next year, and the potential to rattle a few trees that lead to this decision.

The only problem I have is that what Zadie Smith perceives as greatness would vary wildly from the opinions of “Rimbaud or Capote… Irving Rosenthal or Proust… Svevo or Trocchi… Ballard or Bellow, Denis Cooper or Diderot… Coetzee or Patricia Highsmiththe” (writers mentioned in her explanation). Again, the “not good enough” ruling calls out for examples. They usually publish an anthology of the shortlisted stories – I think it would be more interesting to read it this year (with an introduction addressing where they fell short) than the last two year’s anthologies.

If anyone involved in the competition is reading, it may take some grovelling to the short-listed entrants, but such an anthology would do more for writing than simply keeping mum until next year.