Results 2007 - Short Story Competition

Short Story Judge 2007:-

The winning entries to the City of Derby Writing Competition 2007 are now included in our Archive.  The results of this year's short story competition, together with our Judge's Report, are given below:-                                                     [ Link to Results 2007 - Poetry Competition]

Short Stories     

1st Prize              Maria Goodin                    Nutmeg

Maria Goodin
 

Maria was introduced to the short story form whilst studying for a degree in English and French at University. She greatly enjoyed the works of Raymond Carver and a couple of years ago made her first tentative steps into the world of short story writing. She was delighted to have a couple of her early stories published in Writers' Forum and Scribble magazines. She is currently training to become a counsellor, and her writing more and more reflects her interest in psychology and the workings of the human mind.

2nd Prize            Joel Willans                     Buy Ma Biscuits or Kiss Ma Fish

Joel Willans

Joel's writing is inspired by the places he has seen and the people he has met. Born in the UK, he has travelled throughout the world and lived in Canada, Finland and Peru.  He has a degree in History and studied creative writing at The London School of Journalism. Currently, he works as copywriter for Konsepti, a Helsinki ad agency, where he has won various awards for his work. Besides commercial writing, he has been a contributor to a number of magazines, but his passion is fiction.  His short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Bonfire, SciFantastic, The Green Muse, PenPusher, Twisted Tongue, La Fenetre, Smokebox and three anthologies, Brain Dead, The Remarkable Everyday and the Route Compendium. In 2007, he made the final of competitions run by Tonto Press, Cadenza and Writelink, and of course is now second in the City of Derby short story competition.  He is inspired by the work of writers such as Irvine Welsh, Iain Banks, Jonathan Carroll, China Melville, Ian McEwan, J. M. Coetzee, Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Aldous Huxley, Roald Dahl and George Orwell.

3rd Prize            Garry Pope                            Too Late?

Garry Pope

The following works are considered as Highly Commended short story submissions:-

Alexandra Fox                        Layers, Liars  (Alexandra came second in last year's Derby competition.)

Douglas Bruton                       The Grand Illusion

Derek Taylor                           Grand Plan

Richard Walsh                         Ditch

Martin Pevsner                         N'Djamena

Lesley Lodge                            One that Got Away

Judge's Report

After a fine summer of short story reading, it feels somewhat churlish to divide the spoils. Three entrants win the main prizes, six receive honourable mentions, which leaves nearly five hundred who added greatly to my reading pleasure with the otherwise slim reward of ‘taking part’.

So my thanks to everybody first. You’ve delivered a true wealth of invention, emotion, linguistic dexterity, imaginative feats both wild and subtle, enough characters to fuel a fresh Tolstoyan novel sequence, settings in history, the present, lands of fantasy and of the future. Beauty and horror too, and a whole range of different landscapes. Bravi!

Yet it is also a treat to award prizes. As I write this, I suspect the winner is female and the two runners up are male, but that is just me swinging with the gender of the principle characters. Names as well as gender were hidden from me during the judging process. One writing exercise I like to play with is to hand out a sheaf of pages from books and have people guess the writer’s gender. Decisions are generally divided, and when everyone agrees – they tend to be wrong.

Each of these three stories could have grabbed the overall prize. They are terrific.

Nutmeg finally ran well clear with the winner’s trophy. Many of the stories I read were fables. Even within the reach of this genre, Nutmeg stands out. There is wit and intelligence in each of the fantastical sentences.

And after the first fantastical sally the story soon reaches out into new depths. We discover the narrator is so tired of all these fantasies. A young science student, her character comes across clearly and fiercely as she faces up to her dreamboat of a mother.

You can tell a fine Bordeaux by the levels of taste you discover in a glass. Each section of this tale takes you deeper, but no part of it is overdone. The writer’s fingers have reached in and kneaded the very source of storytelling, how tales can provide a refuge, how the very existence of a refuge implies the toughness of existence. This is a wonderful story, full of insight, humour, and ultimately grace.

Buy ma biscuits or kiss ma fish, the second prizewinner, could win a special award for my favourite title. This is a gorgeous story. It’s canvas is small, just a run of a few minutes on a beach, but within that span we enjoy a spasm of developing self-awareness. The narrator’s past, his current predicament, is sketched in lightly but well enough to give the character some depth. All is shown in his first person voice, dialogue helping to bring other characters through as their own individuals. We see the scene through the character’s eyes, and from what he chooses to see and how he describes it, we also come to know him. The writing is crisp, the details precise. The lady with her choice of a puffer fish’s kiss or biscuits, is a splendid creation, a few light touches penning in a sense of her special powers without overdoing them. The ending is delicate and warm, another note of grace.

Too Late?, our third prize winner, struck me from its very opening. ‘On stage you tower over a podium …’ It’s not often you find that second-person voice, that ‘you’, given such an extended workout as here. ‘You’ can be very inclusive, drawing the reader in as though spoken to directly. Here it sets the narrator some way outside the story, giving the main character a good talking to. A tone like that, you expect some grand moral punch to be delivered in the end. Some ‘now look what you’ve done’ come-uppance. The story takes us into the world of a top executive, the details of that business world quite convincing to me. Dialogue is excellent, the young temp Zoë revealing herself in her few spoken lines. The story makes excellent use of detail. I particularly enjoyed the toilet scene, our executive gaining a chilling and unwelcome perspective on himself. It’s a tale of wealth and infidelity, but does it pack its punch at the end? A prize winning one. Enjoy!

Martin Goodman, September 2007