No LGBTQ? No entries.

Tags

Alison Macleod, discrimination, flash fiction, judges, LBGTQ, Sarah Manning, short story comps, The Brighton Prize, The Short Story, Twitter, writing competitions

I’m almost done reading for the Brighton Prize 2018. I’m one of the judges along with ace author Alison MacLeod and literary agent Sarah Manning. There are 10 stories in each category, short and flash, whittled down from over 600, all anonymously, thanks to Prize Director Alice Cuninghame who had the not insubstantial task of co-ordinating everything. It was made slightly more difficult by people not telling us the stories they had submitted had been shortlisted elsewhere but this is a minor quibble. We are writers too so we know how difficult it can be to wait for news of submissions but if you are entering a writing competition please read the rules to save yourself, and the organisers, time and money.

I must say I am impressed by the standard of stories so far, there are a couple that are utterly brilliant and I’m looking forward to discussing who should win at the judges meeting later this month. It’s always interesting to see who favours what. I’ve been doing this for four years now and sometimes arriving at the winners is easy because there is a clear favourite from the off and sometimes it takes hours of discussion. It’s also interesting to see who wins as I don’t know who the writers are until we have arrived at our winners and Alice tells us who wrote what. There are usually familiar names in the shortlist, Rattle Tales regulars or previous short-listees but now we are truly international, it could be anyone.

Writing competitions were making waves on Twitter this week. Some people shared news of a free to enter American flash fiction contest promising cash prizes, who listed this rule in their entry requirements;

‘No swearing, profanity, explicit sexual scenes, graphic violence, LGBTQ’

Obviously it’s nigh on impossible to write a flash fiction without using those letters so they won’t get many entries. Seriously though, how is LGBTQ fiction equatable with graphic violence and explicit sex in the year 2018? Apart from the fact that it reads like a Brighton Prize wish list, how can a modern writing contest get away with a rule like this? Well the answer is that they can’t, not without some serious shade, over on Twitter there was much swearing and profanity (as they are obviously very different things!) and several writers posted the LGBTQ entries they had submitted to the competition. Clearly the organisers can chose to prohibit any type of story they want, it doesn’t say no LGBTQ writers so it’s not actual discrimination but it is de facto discrimination and this is why writers reacted the way they did. Never rile the seemingly placid writing community; our teddy bears have vampire teeth, potty mouths, explicit sexual encounters and a back catalogue of horrific torturous deaths just waiting to be tapped into. Faced with the outrage the competition organisers changed their rules to this;

§  All contests have parameters. We are not interested in the following genres:

§  Stories with swearing or profanity

§  Horrific deaths/torture/horror

§  Romance in general

§  Futuristic stories

§  Sexual scenes

§  Fantasy

§  Sci-Fi

§  LGBTQ – some have asked if they can use gay characters. It depends on the story and how it is written. The judges will make that determination.

There’s no way anything interesting is winning this competition. This level of open discrimination is pretty shocking but not surprising. What did warm the heart was the response of the writing community; people who had shared the comp unaware of the rules soon removed it from their feeds and websites. Big shout out here to The Short Story who tweeted the following offer;

Hi! In light of recent news on Twitter re comps etc., I’m looking for 2 LGBTQ+ writers who’d be interested in reading for a pop-up fiction sub window we’ll be having in early December. Pls email – rupert@theshortstory.co.uk outlining relevant experience & we’ll go from there!

And, newsflash! Writers HQ have just added a new competition in response, specifically asking for LGBTQ flash fiction.

• This contest has a couple of parameters. We are ONLY interested in the following:
  • Stories with swearing and/or profanity (blasphemy optional)
  • Stories on an LGBTQ+ theme
  • Stories about love, acceptance, charity and grace
• Entry is FREE (because yay inclusivity), but you are very welcome and actively encouraged to make an optional donation to LGBTQ+ mental health charity MindOut if you can

So you don’t need to enter a creative writing competition with no imagination, go instead to a place of tolerance, which publishes some of the best flash fiction on the planet.

The winners of The Brighton Prize will be announced at an awards event at The Brunswick Pub  on November 18th, 2-5 pm.

Yes! Vampire teddies are a real thing. Picture, ArtUndead Etsy Store

Views expressed here are my own.

Last Chance To Enter The Brighton Prize!

Tags

Alison Macleod, competitions, Erinna Mettler, flash fiction, Golden Hare Books, Haleh Agar, Sarah Manning, short stories, Sussex, writing

As a director of The Brighton Prize I have the good fortune to act as one of the judges every year. The prize is open for international entries of short stories (between 1,000 and 2,000 words) and flash fiction (up to 350 words). It’s always exciting to see what stories arrive through the inbox and there are always some truly world class entries. We like to see stories that are a little bit out of the ordinary, that look at the world in a different way, through different eyes. We also love a laugh and rarely get sent anything funny so if you have something that will make us guffaw it might be worth sending it – comedy is a difficult write though.

This year my fellow judges are author Alison MacLeod (previously long-listed for the Man Booker and currently shortlisted for The Edge Hill Prize) and literary agent Sarah Manning

On what she looks for as a judge Alison says: ‘In a great story, I love to see a writer’s understanding that seemingly small dramas can reveal the profound stuff of life; that ordinary events can reveal the extraordinary.  Melodrama swamps a short story of course. If a story is about the extraordinary or the fantastical, I want to be shown the ordinary human truth within those events. I love a confident prose style. whether the language of the story is gritty and stark, or lucid and clear, or rich and rhythmic. I want the voice of a story to draw me in with its quiet force or alternatively, to grab me and say, ‘Listen… This story matters.’

Sarah says: ‘I am excited to be a judge for the Brighton Prize and am looking forward to discovering new voices. If the main character jumps off the page and has a clear goal which keeps me reading, then I am hooked no matter the genre!’.

And me? ‘I want to see stories that linger long after reading. There has to be something new and original, an authentic voice, a subject no-one has thought of before. Be as ‘out there’ as possible but keep it simple. The story should be suitable for a public reading and should therefore be easy to follow. I love cinematic writing; I want to be immersed in new worlds. Writers need to show that they have paid attention to detail too. I don’t want to see any silly mistakes as I’ve got to edit the stories for publication!’

The winners and short-listees of last year’s prize were all offered publication. There was a prize-giving in Brighton in November, a launch at Golden Hare Books in Edinburgh, an event at Brighton Fringe Festival and our Flash Fiction winner Haleh Agar was published in Viva Brighton a local magazine with a circulation of 26,000.

All this AND big cash prizes!

You’d be silly not to enter. www.brightonprize.com

 

Can You Tell A Story In One Paragraph?

Tags

flash, flash fiction, Frederick Iv of Denmark, Italy, Lucca, Maria Maddelena, Palazzo Pfanner, Paragraph Planet, Portrait of a Lady, short stories, Tuscany, Villa Checco

Welcome to autumn everyone. I had a lovely summer break in Lucca, Tuscany, and in this distinctly autumnal air I long to be back amongst the olive groves and grapevines listening to the crickets under the warmth of the sun. I travelled to Tuscany with family and friends and the holiday was light-hearted and relaxing and involved lots of good food and laughter. We stayed at Villa Checco only a ten minute drive from the beautiful walled city of Lucca.

I have been to Lucca before but that time it was a much more rushed scramble to see everything in a day, this time it was a leisurely amble much more akin to how the Italians do it. Passeggiata they call it, like the Victorian promenade, largely unplanned, experiences come to you as you stroll. It’s a writer’s dream. On a just warm enough evening some of our party took the kids cycling around the city walls while my friend Gill and I took a walk around the Palazzo Pfanner and its beautiful ornamental gardens. The bamboo garden whispered in the breeze and the central fountain tinkled delicately as we made our way from the garden into the villa. You can stay in Palazzo Pfanner which was the setting for the film Portrait Of A Lady. We weren’t allowed into the private apartments but the main hall and the rooms adjacent to it have been turned into a mini museum. The Palazzo was bought in 1845 by the brewer Felix Pfanner and used as a cottage hospital for the town by his son Peter. Peter Pfanner’s life sounds worthy of novelisation, a psychologist and brain surgeon with a philanthropic attitude,  but it was the dedication accompanying a portrait in one of the bedrooms off the main hall that piqued my interest.

The portrait was of Frederick IV of Denmark. My friend pointed it out to me. ‘Read this,’ she said, ‘and tell me what you think happened.’

Frederick IV King of Denmark and Norway (1671-1730)

In 1692 Prince Frederick of Denmark and Norway stayed in this bedroom during a short sojourn in Lucca. In these rooms the young Prince fell in love with Maria Maddalena Trenta, a gentlewoman from Lucca. Their passionate affair came to an unhappy end. Prince Frederick went back to Copenhagen and was elected King and Maria Maddalena became a nun.

Poor Maria Maggalena. There it was, a whole story of love, passion, disgrace and inequality in a couple of sentences. We looked at the tiny four poster, presumably the location for much of the passion, and digested Maria’s fate. There was no portrait of the lady but Frederick was only twenty-one when he stayed there so she was probably younger. Their affair lasted only weeks and then he went off to be king and she was consigned to a nunnery. The brevity of the story makes it all the more powerful. Like the famous ‘baby shoes for sale, never worn’ it is what isn’t said that provides the emotional interest, we use our imaginations to create the story around it. My friend and I talked about the court, the scandal of an affair between lovers of different religions, the folly of young love, the unfairness of the lady’s punishment and the fact that she was blamed while the man went off to be king without a second thought. This short story made such an impression that I looked up Fredrick IV when I got home. Apparently he turned into a complete womaniser with two unhappy marriages and returned to Tuscany twice, both times visiting Maria in the nunnery and left looking visibly moved. Perhaps Frederick suffered after all, though not the indignity of banishment into religious servitude.

The next day I had a flash fiction published on Paragraph Planet, a website which publishes a 75 word story every day (I’ve mentioned this site before because it’s fun to do, so go and have a go). I told my friend about it. ‘How can you tell a story in 75 words?’ she asked. ‘You can! Think about Frederick and Maria,’ I replied, ‘that was less than 75 words.’ She read my story and told me that it was indeed a story and not just a collection of words. But is it? I posted a link to the story of Paragraph Planet on my Facebook page and a couple of people commented that they couldn’t wait to read the rest. So, can you tell a story in 75 words or can you only start one?  I have since reworked DOLL as a poem. I find that I often do this with one paragraph stories. It’s as if the original paragraph is the template for a poem. Maybe the question should be can a poem tell a story? I think the answer to both questions is yes but you may not agree.

 

A Duet For Father’s Day

Tags

Brighton Fringe, Dads, Ella Fitzgerald, Father's Day, flash fiction, Rattle Tales, The Brunswick

Hello again. It’s been a while I know but I’ve been busy with family things. Anyway, I read this piece of flash fiction at the Rattle Tales show at Brighton Fringe. It was original written for Paragraph Planet  (a brilliant website that publishes 75 word stories daily) but the story felt longer so I decided to expand it. It seems a fitting post for Father’s Day especially as my Dad isn’t here anymore. I’m sure many of you are missing your fathers today but eventually painful memories can become sweet and that was the idea behind Duet. This one is for you Dad.

DUET

I walk into town despite the deep snow. It’s a necessary trip; I’ve left it late to buy my son’s birthday present and stuff for his party tomorrow.  Besides I like the crunch of snow under my boots, the tickle of fresh flakes on my face. Snow makes me feel alive; its cold brief beauty.

I finish what I have to do by eleven and I’m starting to feel the chill so I decide to thaw out in the M&S cafe.

The warm café is buzzing with shelter-seekers. Easy listening pipes loudly through the speakers – Wham, Chicago, Enrique – teaspoons chink on china and the coffee machines whirr.

I settle at a table, bags at my feet, sip my coffee and relax.

Ella Fitzgerald comes on, Every time We Say Goodbye. Ella Fitzgerald was my Dad’s favourite. ‘No one sings like Ella,’ he used to say. ‘She could shatter glass!’ And I’d always roll my eyes and say, ’must have been very inconvenient at parties.’ And then Dad would roll his eyes and we’d chuckle at our incompatibility.

A few lines in a man’s voice joins Ella’s from the corner table, softly at first, barely a murmur. I look over. It’s an old man. He’s wearing a stained jumper, brown shirt and tie, a bedraggled hunting hat is pulled low over his ears. His eyes are shut. His face deeply lined, rosy nose bulbous and pitted. A small tea sits untouched in front of him. His voice grows with the song, becoming  deeper and more resonant. By the second chorus it booms clearly across the café, word-matched to Ella’s, rising and falling in time, the perfect duet. Everybody stops, even the baristas, and turns to watch him.

‘There’s no love song finer, but how strange the change from major to minor…’

The song ends too quickly and the man looks down at his tea-cup, failing to acknowledge the smattering of applause.

The Spice Girls are on next.

Small Wonders

Tags

Belle Amatt, Belle Nutrition, boys and literature, Charleston, Cherry Radford, children's competitions, children's literature, Chris Bradford, creative writing, flash fiction, Hurst Festival, hurtpierpoint, Jill Hucklesby, Lonny Pop, prizes, Rattle Tales, short stories, slams, Small Wonder Festival, spoken word events, The Mint House, writing

What an inspirational few days. On Thursday I went to Hurstpierpoint to attend Loud Literature, a children’s creative writing event staged as part of Hurst Festival. It’s organisers, Belle Amatt and bookseller, Deb Hollywood did a great job getting entries from local children. They were kind enought to ask me to help with the judging. The stories and poems I read in the 12-15 category were amazing, far beyond anthing I imagined the children would produce and it was extremely hard to decide on which ones were the best. In the end they were all winners because at the event pretty much everybody who wanted to read their work (and that was nearly everyone) got a chance to and many of the stories were displayed in Hurst Library. The atmosphere was very light and supportive I and my fellow judge, Jill Hucklesby, Chris Bradford and Cherry Radford read our own work and commented on the stories read by the children, all of whom read brilliantly and very confidently. In my category I particularly liked the story from the point of view of a hunted guinea pig and a heart-wrenching long poem about a man fallen on hard times which was wise beyond the writer’s years. One of the girls, Philippa Crondwell, submitted two pieces, a poem and a short story, both of which were so good they would have done well in any adult national competition. That girl is definitely one to watch. I was also struck by how many boys entered stories and read beautifully to the audience. Boys get a bad press about writing and creativity and on Thursday that assumption was shown to be very wrong indeed. Thanks to Belle and Deb and I really hope the event happens again next year though if it does, I think you’ll need a bigger venue! 

On Friday night Rattle Tales helped out at the Small Wonder Festival Slam in Charleston. Our own Lonny Pop was the host of the shovel themed competition and the rest of us were reading, judging, assisting, adding up (Countdown stylee) or just there to shake our rattles and put leaflets on every available surface! It was such a great event. For those of you who don’t know a slam involves names being pulled from a hat to decide who gets to read and we had a rather fetching red topper borrowed from my cabaret singer neighbour! Lonny couldn’t have done a better job and everyone who wanted to read did (including this very lovely 92 yr old lady) as it over ran just long enough to make sure there were no more names in the hat! I read at the Slam last year and it was a terrifying experience, but a lot can happen in a year and this time when I took to the stage (as one of the Rattle Tales scene setters) I didn’t feel nervous at all and Lonny (whose name wasn’t pulled from the hat last year) smashed it as host. Can you dig it? Yes you can!