Category Archives: prizes

Winner of 2013 Scott Prize announced

For those of you that haven’t already heard, the winner of the Scott Prize was announced over the weekend. As one of the shortlisted authors I spent a nervous Friday and half of Saturday awaiting the result, which appeared on Twitter a little after lunch:

As you can see, the brilliant Kirsty Logan won and her collection The Rental Heart and other Fairytales will be published by Salt later this year. Having enjoyed each of the Scott Prize winning collections I have so far read, I am very much looking forward to it. ‘The Rental Heart’ was one of my favourites from The Best British Short Stories 2011 and if the rest of the collection is half as good, it’ll be a corker.

This week…

…I have mostly been made happy by the following:

being runner-up in the Thresholds Feature Competition,

listening to this young lady and her popular beat combo,

reading the latest slice of brilliant from Caroline Smailes,

The-Drowning-of-Arthur-Braxton_cover

and listening to Lowercase Noises while writing a piece of flash fiction to submit for this year’s National Flash Fiction Day anthology.

What’s made you happy this week?

Thresholds Feature Competition Winner Announced.

And this year’s winner of the Threshold’s Feature competition is the brilliant and lovely Nuala Ní Chonchúir. Her essay A Trio of Short Stories is a heartfelt examination of three stories that, though read as a child, have had a lasting impact upon her. Those of you who have read the My Life In Short Fiction posts on this blog will know I am always interested in discovering the stories that helped shape a writer’s unique perspective. If after reading Nuala’s excellent essay you are eager to find out more about the stories she cherishes, you can read her Life in Short Fiction post here.

I am delighted to be able to say that my little essay on Stig Dagerman‘s excellent collection, The Games of Night, was the runner-up and will appear on the Thresholds website on Monday (29th April).

A big congratulations to Nuala and the other short-listed and long-listed essayists. I am looking forward to reading each of them as they appear on Thresholds.

Now go read Nuala’s essay already.

Longlisted for the 2013 Thresholds Feature Competition

Woke this morning to a lovely email telling me my entry for this year’s International Feature Writing Competition longlist over on Thresholds. Being longlisted alongside folks like Carys Bray, Tom Volwer and Nuala Ní Chonchúir, who as well as being friends are authors of some of my favourite short fiction collections of recent years, is really exciting. Indeed, the whole list is an intriguing mix of titles and I can’t wait to read them all.

The official announcement from the Thresholds website:

2013 THRESHOLDS International Feature Writing Competition Longlist

We would like to extend our hearty thanks to all those who entered this year’s competition. We also congratulate the following writers whose work has been selected for the 2013 THRESHOLDS Feature Writing Competition longlist. Look out for the shortlist results on The Forum next week, as well as a special post about this year’s competition.

LONGLIST

  • Julia Anderson: ‘The Orphan and the Mob’ by Julian Gough
  • Anna Arbiter: No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
  • Carys Bray: We Recommend Adam Marek
  • Jason Clifton: Storm Warnings in a Purple Haze: Robert Stone’s Bear and his Daughter
  • Stephen Devereux: The Fall of the British Empire – Saki’s ‘The Lumber Room’
  • Stephen Devereux: Whistle– If You Dare! An exploration of M. R. James’s ‘Oh Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad’
  • Hugh Fulham-McQuillan: Julio Cortázar
  • Tracy Maylath: How to Read Lorrie Moore
  • Nuala Ní Chonchúir: A Trio of Irish Short Stories
  • Dan Powell: Stig Dagerman’s The Games of Night
  • Mike Smith: ‘The Little Farm’ by H.E.Bates
  • Tom Vowler: Touch by Graham Mort
  • Juliet West: ‘Miriam’ by Truman Capote

That was the week that was

The last week or so has been a bit wonderful. While I was still reeling from receiving an Esoteric Award from the brilliant Carve Magazine, I found my debut collection on the Scott Prize shortlist. Was that really only seven days ago?

Since then:

I’ve discovered that Storm in a Teacup earned itself a runners-up spot in the first ever Salt Short Story Prize. This means it will appear later this year in Salt’s first New Writing anthology alongside the winners and runners-up for not only the Short Story Prize but the Flash Fiction and Poetry Prize also. Looking forward to reading the other stories, flash fictions and poems.

My essay on Chekhov’s The Exclamation Mark is live over on the short story forum, Thresholds.

And yesterday I found out that my family and I be returning to live in the U.K. in the summer. So all in all very exciting times.

As for today, I’m over on the Salt blog talking about how my collection Looking out of Broken Windows came into being and my future plans. You can also read an excerpt of one of the stories in the collection and find links for a few more that can be read online. To listen to me bang on about myself, my writing and the people who inspire me, head over to the Salt blog now.