Turning Pages: The many prizes for short stories
There's no equivalent of the Man Booker fiction prize for a short story, but the Sunday Times award must come close. The 2019 winner will receive £30,000 ($53,500), which makes it the most valuable prize in the world for a single short story.
Last year a relatively new writer, Courtney Zoffness, beat shortlisted literary heavyweights Miranda July and Curtis Sittenfeld to win with Peanuts Ain't Nuts, a story described as dealing masterfully with the bridge between innocence and adulthood.
This year a new sponsor, Audible, will produce an audiobook anthology of the shortlisted stories. Australian writers, you can enter if you have a track record of published creative writing in Britain or Ireland. But don't worry if you don't have such a track record: there are plenty of other opportunities to shine.
I didn't realise how many short-story competitions there are out there until I started looking. Aerogramme Writers' Studio lists 36 international contests for 2019, and they range from the prestigious and lucrative (the Sunday Times award, or the Commonwealth Short Story Prize) to the small, local and charmingly quirky. Supplement this with a list from the Australian Writers' Centre of 14 prizes for 2019 and you have a wide choice. And even these are just the tip of the iceberg.
Who could resist the Magic Oxygen literary competition? The first prize is £1000 ($1700), which is pretty average prize money, but for every entry, the organisers will plant a tree in Kenya. And when the contest closes, they will mail you the GPS co-ordinates of your tree.
Some prizes come with residencies, mentorships, publication in a magazine, or other perks. You can score a week at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy and a consultation with a US literary agent if you win the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize; or a week at Anam Cara Writer's and Artist's Retreat in Ireland if you win the Sean o Faolain International Short Story Competition.
Others have challenging themes or handicaps. If you enter the Literary Taxidermy competition, the organisers will provide you with your opening and closing lines, taken from a classic work of literature.
Top Australian awards include the $12,500 Elizabeth Jolley prize; and the Newcastle award (three prizes totalling $5700). For genre writers there are the Scarlet Stilettos for crime fiction written by women; or the Aurealis awards for speculative fiction.
And again, there are quirky ones. For the 2019 Sheila Malady competition for the Shakespeare on the River Festival, you must write on the theme of "Shakesfeare". (The festival takes place at Stratford: not the Bard's birthplace, but Stratford in Gippsland, Victoria).
With so many wildly differing opportunities, what are short story judges looking for? Is there any common standard of excellence? Seasoned Australian judge Vikki Petraitis told Writers Victoria that standout entries "can tell a deep truth in a simple small story".
Clio Gray, judge of the HISSAC award, says the story "has to smack me in the eyes in the first paragraph. If it can lead me straight into a strange new world and out the other side again, I'm a very happy judge".
But Nikesh Shukla, judge of the Bristol prize, says it's all a crapshoot – there are no rules for literary merit and no hard and fast guidelines for what is outstanding. "Write like you want to write the best short story you can. Not because you think it's going to win."
And I'll add: read the small print. There's nothing more maddening than sending off your beautifully crafted story and then realising it's not eligible.
Janesullivan.sullivan9@gmail.com