TEA-SHOP WITH TANIA THEN DOWN THE PUB WITH RANA DASGUPTA

Lovely day for writing innit?
So was yesterday. I met Tania Hershman at St Pancras station, straight off Eurostar, from the retreat in Belgium she won in the Biscuit competition. Clever lady. As I waited I browsed the shops, looked for Salt books in Foyles... not one. 'Harangue them!' T texted. Maybe I should have.
T and I had tea at Peyton and Byrne, whose cupcakes look... like toys. They look as if they are actually made to float in the bath. Unreal, like illustrations in a children's book! (see pic above)
Lovely to catch up with T. Lovely to see that she is looking OK, if tired. (I was worried, because I'm an inveterate mother hen). She is having a story performed TONIGHT by Liar's League HERE

Thence by magical hated Underground tunnel to Picadilly and Costa Coffee in Lower Regent Street for the Willesden Herald Short Story Competition award ceremony, in the company of this year's judge, Rana Dasgupta.
What a brill event. Sponsored by Pulp.net, the prize was this year the coveted grail of short story writing (the Willesden Herald MUG) and a bit of cash.
Readings by three shortlistees, Jo Lloyd from Wales, Margot Taylor from Somerset and Jill Widner from the other Washington, USA. Also present, shortlistees Claudia Boers and Jenny Barden. The MUG is too precious to photograph, so here is a pic of Lord Willesden-Herald perusing a back copy of his media empire.
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Rana Dasgupta (Website HERE) took the floor, reading from his new novel, Solo. HERE. The novel ( this man's writing is endorsed by Salman Rushdie) tells the story of Ulrich, a 100 year old man in Bulgaria. Atmosphere, setting, character, intrigue, pathos... Rana Dasgupta

"And the runners up are...Jill Widner and Ben Cheetham."
Drum Roll...
"...and the winner is.....Jo Lloyd!" her story 'Work' leads the anthology, and the opening sentences are on the back cover. Not bad for a first publication, Jo. Many many congratulations.
Bought a copy of the brilliant looking Willesden Herald NEW SHORT STORIES 3

Then got it signed by as many winners and shortlistees as I could find in the crush.
Then a whole bunch of us went to the pub. Including the judge. Now that is a lovely thing for the guy to do.
Great to natter at length to Mrs (Lady) Willesden-Herald. These guys are simply great. So even though Mr Willesden herald would probably say 'No ta', I have elevated them both to the peerage. (Which means they will now be peered at. That's all it ever means anyway in real life innit?....)

Then home on the train. And read two stories: 'The Imperfect Roundness of Things' by Claudia Boers, and 'Ebb Tide' by Margot Taylor.

Much much enjoyed. The end of a poifick day.

Willesden Herald Short Story Competition Short List

Congratulations to all the writers who are on the Willesden Herald Short List. Especially to friend and fellow Salt author Carys Davies!!! I've linked Carys's bio below to her page on the Salt Publishing website.
The following is copied from Willesden Herald.

The following have been shortlisted for the Willesden short story competiton 2009:

"Propitiation" by Jenny Barden
"The Imperfect Roundness of Things" by Claudia Boers
"The Hate Club" by Ben Cheetham
"The Travellers" by Carys Davies
"Ante-Purgatory" by Carol Farrelly
"Amy" by Nick Holdstock
"Work" by Jo Lloyd
"Ebb Tide" by Margot Taylor
"Mina and Fina and Lotte Wattimena" by Jill Widner
"Tokyo Chocolate" by Morowa Yejidé

To find out who has won come back here or join us at the the Pulp Net Short Story Café event with Rana Dasgupta at Costa in Piccadilly on March 9th.

About the authors

Jenny Barden trained as an artist, then a lawyer, and for several years worked for one of the leading firms of commercial solicitors in the City of London. Chance research into a painting triggered a passion for writing. Journeys in South and Central America then led to ideas for a novel set in the New World during the Age of Discovery. That novel is now close to completion, and Propitiation derives from one of the chapters in an early draft. Jenny is represented by Jonathan Pegg of the Jonathan Pegg Literary Agency. For more about her writing visit: www.jennybarden.com

Claudia Boers is originally from Johannesburg and now lives in London. She left behind a career in fashion to focus on writing in 2007. She's been published in Your Messages (a collection of flash fiction) and was commended in the Ilkley Short Story Competition 2008. Claudia's currently working on her first collection of short stories and is fascinated by the imperfect roundness of life.

Ben Cheetham lives and writes in Sheffield. His short fiction has been published or is forthcoming in The London Magazine, Dream Catcher, Staple, Transmission, Momaya Annual Review 2008, Swill, Hoi Polloi and various other magazines.

Carys Davies's short stories have won prizes in national and international competitions, including the Bridport, Asham, Orange/Harpers & Queen and Fish. They have been published in magazines and anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her debut collection of short stories Some New Ambush (Salt, 2007) was one of ten books longlisted for the 2008 Wales Book of the Year Prize and was also a Finalist in the 2008 Calvino Prize in the US. She lives in Lancaster with her husband and four children.

Carol Farrelly is currently a student of Glasgow University’s MLitt in Creative Writing. She has lived in Italy, London, Oxford and Brighton. Italy and London are the places she still misses. She has had several short stories published in magazines such as Litro and Random Acts of Writing.

Nick Holdstock’s work has appeared in Edinburgh Review, Stand, and The Southern Review. He recently edited the Stolen Stories anthology. http://www.nickholdstock.com/

Jo Lloyd grew up in Wales and now lives in Oxford. Her stories have been longlisted for the Bridport and Asham prizes. She is not [sic] working on a novel.

Margot Taylor is an ex lollipop lady who lives with her husband and two teenagers in Somerset, UK. Her spare time is divided between her passions for boating, running on the nearby Quantock Hills, and writing short stories.

Jill Widner was the recipient of a 2007 Artist Trust/ Washington State Arts Commission fellowship; she was a resident at Yaddo in 2007 and 2008; and she is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. “Mina and Fina and Lotte Wattimena” is an excerpt from her novel in progress, The Smell of Sulphur, which fictionalizes her experience growing up in Indonesia in the 1960s. Other excerpts have been published or are forthcoming in North American Review, Hobart (online), and Kyoto Journal. Her fiction has also appeared recently in Memoir (and), 971 Menu, and Hitotoki (New York). She lives in Yakima, Washington.

Morowa Yejidé is a native of Washington, D.C. She was educated at Kalamazoo College, where she received her degree in International Relations, and graduated from an international exchange program at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. Her short stories have appeared in the Istanbul Literary Review, Ascent Aspirations Magazine, The Taj Mahal Review, and Underground Voices, and others. Her stories often focus on the layers of relationships and the inner landscapes of her characters’ minds. Tokyo Chocolate is a tapestry of her own experiences and impressions. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and three sons.

PRONOUNCEMENTS FROM ABOVE

(ABOVE WILLESDEN)
Pobably from that small bedroom at the back.

This musing from the reader of the entries for this year’s Willesden Comp. (Nope. Too late. Deadline all gone). Copied from WILLESDEN HERALD, HERE... >


A reading from the book of readings

• Thou shalt not indent the first line of the whole piece or the first line of separate sections.
• Thou shalt not put "The End" at the end.
• Thou shalt not put pictures in the manuscript for a writing competition.
• Thou shalt double-space, not single or 1.5 space.
• Thou shalt leave one inch margins at least.
• Thou shalt not include extracts of text from other sources which perplexeth the copyright lawyers mightily.
• Thou shalt beware of registered trademarks which likewise troubleth the abovementioned.
• Thou shalt not try to portray thine narrator as a great writer reflecting on troubles with latest world publication deal, because forsooth few readers wilt fall for that old trick.
• Thou shalt not submit multiple entries under false identities, which cometh sequentially all with typography of the tribe of Myopia and transparent airs about each, which giveth unwitting mirth to the reader.
• Thou shalt try to go easy on foreign language words or obscure terms which the reader hath to seek out verily in the temples of Merriam-Webster and Wikipedia, lest they be garbage of the devil.
• Accursed be they who include sentences and phrases in foreign languages that the reader hath no competence in, even if thou attemptest to reassure with translations in which said poor reader can have but little faith.


(We are assured too that these glitches will not necessarily stop a story doing well...but the list is a good thing to have, no?)


Have to say, I agree 100% with the THE END stuff. Heaven's sake. If a short story ends properly, it can't go on, can it, so why should there be a need for TELLING the reader that this is The End?

So unless you are specifically asked to indicate the end (perhaps on an online thing, for example) -a ll you are doing is saying something like this to the reader/judge:

'I am not a very experienced short story writer and I am unsure about this ending. In fact it may not BE the right ending at all. So I have added a few endings, as you will see... and now I've finished, so this is really THE END.'


Might as well type 'The Beginning' at the start, just before the title.


To Mac, who posts that I am being really horrid and nasty to new writers by copying Mr WH's post, and pointing out all this... I don't think so. By the same token, everyone who writes articles intended to give learner writers advice are being nasty. And so are tutors, teachers. All nasty horrid people, for sure.

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Thanks, Mr W H , for posting the list above. I've added it to the info I hand out when I take workshops.

GUARDIAN UNLIMITED BACKS ZADIE'S DECISION...

Great stuff.




Hannah Edelstein, in a well balanced article that looks at the wider scene and considers the feelings of the writers, comes out in favour of Zadie Smith and the Willesden Committee's initial decision not to award the prize.

She says:


It's ... rather depressing to think that...the committee was simply not able to elicit the calibre of entries they were looking for.
But after pondering this teacup-sized storm, and despite my sympathy for the disappointed competitors, I actually think that it is kind of refreshing. Judging from the banter on the blogosphere every time a new longlist is announced, it's apparent that many think the returns of literary prizes are diminishing.
So I rather think it's time someone stood up and said that they weren't just going to hand out stacks of cash to writers just because the calendar requires it. Of course there are going to be periods when the output of writers is more fallow, so why not remark upon it, rather than bowing to the pressure to celebrate something - anything - for tradition's sake? I kind of admire Smith and the rest of the Willesden judges for being the ones to make that stand.

FULL GUARDIAN UNLIMITED ARTICLE HERE




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Willesden Update

Ah, as one Herald blog commenter wrote...the power of bitching. Or words to that effect.

Having stated that no story was strong enough to win, and a vibrant, brave exhortation to writers to do better, The Willesden Competition now has ten winners. The prize money of £5K is to be divided equally, in an act worthy of King Solomon.

One of the winners is a writing friend of mine. Congrats!

But, if I may, I am also sad. Sad because a wake-up call is so badly needed in short story writing all over, especially here. Sad because having taken a decision, however hard, I think it is best to stick to it. And sad because it's a fair bet that this might see the end of this brilliant competition. Will Zadie Smith really want this hoo ha again? It remains to be seen. And is there a Willesden competition without her? And will the hard working filter judges really do this again?

Why the f*** they had to bring money into it, is a mystery. It was lovely, generous, don't get me wrong.

But when the prize was just a mug, there was something straight and true about the competition. It was 'doing one's best for art and a pat on the back'. Thats how this writer saw it.

And that mug and pat on the back was worth ten times the prize money.

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However. This writer now has a 5000 wd stodgy historic story to inject a little zip into. No wonder it didn't get to the last ten!!


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MESSAGE FROM ZADIE SMITH

This is a message from Zadie Smith, in the announcement that after all, the Willesden Herald Competition is not going to award the prize.

BECAUSE NOTHING WAS GOOD ENOUGH TO GRAB THE PRIZE.

And why on earth should they award it if nothing was good enough to win? People are already belly-aching about how the decision is discouraging to writers. But hang on a tick... Anon (probably Mimi!!) means someone ought to be given FIVE GRAND for something not good enough, just to encourage other writers? I fail to see the logic, Anon.

'What is happening? I wonder if it's the MFAs and MAs. If it's the careful and ploddy following of how other people 'do it'? A lack of bravery, a dipping toes in water that is freezing cold. Maybe writers are all going for the water warmed by hot water from kettles, poured by nanny and Mummy?

Maybe they are not taking any notice of zip and spark, and blood and gutsy characters?

Or maybe the other end of the spectrum, they didn't bother to LEARN any craft, and write bloody well.

rant over,

tis a shame the shortlisted writers had their hopes raised... that's hard. But this writing life ain't an easy ride.


This from Zadie Smith

I am very proud to be patron of this prize. 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. Most literary prizes are only nominally about literature, they are really about brand consolidation – for beer companies, phone companies, coffee companies even frozen food companies. The little Willesden Herald Prize is only about good writing, and it turns out that a prize faithfully recognizing this imperative must also face the fact that good writing is actually very rare. For let us be honest again: it is sometimes too easy, and too tempting, to blame everything that we hate in contemporary writing on the bookstores, on the corporate publishers, on incompetent editors and corrupt PR departments – and God knows, they all have their part to play. But we also have our part to play. We also have to work out how to write better and read better. We have to really scour this internet to find the writing we love, and then we have to be able to recognize its quality. We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.

Once again, the judges and I, we are absolutely certain there is great writing out there on this internet. Many of the entries we received suggested it. But we didn’t receive enough. And now, in order to try and draw whatever great writing is out there towards this little website, maybe my fellow judges and I need to be a bit more specific about what we’re looking for. Actually, as it always is with writing and reading, it’s more useful to say what we’re not looking for.

For I have thought, reading through these entries, that maybe the problem with this prize is that my name is attached to it. To be very clear: just because this prize has the words Willesden and Zadie hovering by it, does not mean that I or the other judges want to read hundreds of jolly stories of multicultural life on the streets of North London. Nor are we exclusively interested in cutesy American comedies, or self-referential post-modern vignettes, or college satires. To be even clearer: if these things turn up and are brilliantly written, they will not be ignored. But we also welcome all those whose literary sympathies lie with Rimbaud or Capote, with Irving Rosenthal or Proust, with Svevo or Trocchi, with Ballard or Bellow, Denis Cooper or Diderot, with Coetzee or Patricia Highsmith, with street punks or Elizabethans, with Southern Gothic or with Nordic Crime, with Brutalists or Realists, with the Lyrical or the Encyclopedic, in the ivory tower, or amongst the trash that catches in the gutter. We welcome everybody. We have only one principle here: MAKE IT GOOD.

So, let’s try again, yes? All the requirements for entry you will find below.

I’m very sorry for any disappointment caused this year, but this prize will continue and we hope it will get stronger with each year that passes. And we promise you now and forever: it will never be sponsored by a beer company.

Yours sincerely,

Zadie Smith


FULL POST HERE