This category covers literary prizes that award short stories, rather than drama, poetry or novels.
To see all the latest literary awards news, see the front page of The Burnt Ones: Literary Awards News.
Montana NZ winners announced
Date: August 2, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Winners of the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards have been announced. The awards, given annually to the best writing in New Zealand, were this year dominated by Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip, which won the Medal (main prize), and was selected as the fiction winner by both the panel as well as the readers. Janet Frame, meanwhile, won the Poetry Prize for her posthumous collection The Goose Bath.
Works awarded this year in the fiction categories are:
MEDAL FOR FICTION OR POETRY, FICTION WINNER, READERS’ CHOICE AWARD: Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives. On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. So begins this rare, original story about the abiding strength that imagination, once ignited, can provide. As artillery echoes in the mountains, thirteen-year-old Matilda and her peers are riveted by the adventures of a young orphan named Pip in a city called London, a city whose contours soon become more real than their own blighted landscape. As Mr. Watts says, “A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe.†Soon come the rest of the villagers, initially threatened, finally inspired to share tales of their own that bring alive the rich mythology of their past. But in a ravaged place where even children are forced to live by their wits and daily survival is the only objective, imagination can be a dangerous thing.
You can read more about Mister Pip at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
FICTION RUNNER UP: The Cowboy Dog
by Nigel Cox
When Chester Farlowe’s father is killed, Chester is forced to leave the vast cattle ranches of New Zealand’s central volcanic plateau for the badlands of urban Auckland. Henry Stroud, proprietor of the I Fry takeaway wagon, takes him under his wing and rechristens him “Mr. Dog.†Still full of anger six years later, Chester sets out to plot revenge on his father’s killer and finds that he must contend with Boss Lennox, the Sultation Kid, and the seductive and inscrutable Miss Peet before he gets to the showdown. This mythical story reconfigures the New Zealand experience with an absorbing coming-of-age tale.
You can read more about The Cowboy Dog at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
FICTION RUNNER UP: The Fainter
by Damien Wilkins
Unfortunately, no description is available for this work.
POETRY: The Goose Bath
by Janet Frame
Unfortunately, no description is available for this work.
BEST FIRST FICTION: The Sound of Butterflies
by Rachael King
Unfortunately, no description is available for this work.
BEST FIRST POETRY: Secret Heart
by Airini Beautrais
Unfortunately, no description is available for this work.
Filed under Commonwealth literature, Fiction, Novels, Poetry, Short stories, Winners
Frank O’Connor shortlist announced
Date: July 31, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Shortlist for the 2007 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize has been announced. The world’s richest short story award, now awarded for the third time, is funded by the Cork City Council, and awarded annually in association with the Irish Times.
This year’s shortlist consists of six authors from five countries, with only three of the nominated authors being full-time writers. Notable omissions from the original longlist include David Malouf, Alice Munro and Mary Gordon.
This year’s Frank O’Connor Prize shortlist is:
Opportunity
by Charlotte Grimshaw
Unfortunately, no description is available for this work.
No One Belongs Here More Than You
by Miranda July
In her debut collection of short stories, July introduces the possibility of a moment that can change everything. A child stands in the sidewalk; a woman lies motionless in bed beside her husband; a teacher pauses at the chalkboard; when suddenly the daily drone is disrupted by something completely unexpected. July’s characters are awkward and often remote, yet they are also profoundly sympathetic. With great compassion and generosity she reveals the idiosyncrasies, vulnerability, longing, and odd logic that govern our lives. In “No One Belongs Here More Than You July” creates a deliriously hopeful universe where strangers hug and students swim across the kitchen floor. The same energy that captivates her film audiences is transposed into exhilarating new fiction.
You can read more about No One Belongs Here More Than You at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
Missing Kissinger
by Etgar Keret
A magician tries to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but takes out only its head; a guy brings a girl home with him for the first time only to find that his best friend has pissed on his doorstep; a young man graduates from Magician School but soon discovers that he can’t do everything; two drunk students do battle with a pavement and win; someone has a mother and a girlfriend who hate each other’s guts, and they both demand that he gives them the other one’s heart…many of the characters in these stories are waiting for something to change their lives, many of them can’t quite reach ultimate happiness, some of them are sick, some are abandoned, and most have trouble communicating. The unexpected can, and usually does, happen. Etgar Keret’s stories are very short – and every word counts. They are quick, brief and precise, and they move us without hesitation. They are hilarious and off-the-wall, yet also dark, sometimes violent, and often intensely poignant.
You can read more about Missing Kissinger at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue
by Manuel Muñoz
In a series of ten interconnected stories, Manuel Muñoz illuminates the lives of several Mexican-American families in the same neighborhood in Central California. In these stories, sometimes belief is all there is: belief that a better job will come, that the loved one will return love, that a surly teenager headed for trouble will straighten out, that a gay son will change–faith and hope are staples of these people’s lives. For the most part, they are disappointed. Most of the stories are of single mothers or fathers trying to raise families under the shadow of immigration and language problems and too little money. The subtext of many of the stories is homosexuality, not a lifestyle embraced by the Mexican-American community.
You can read more about The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
Valentines
by Olaf Olafsson
Olaf Olafsson’s fans will recognize the perfect restraint and precision–and quick wit–with which he characteristically explores these dark epiphanies, when the heart is suddenly laid bare, whether by love or betrayal, disenchantment or regret, or the shock of loss. While their settings range from the East Coast to the West Coast, from Paris to Slovenia and Iceland, these contemporary stories probe the complexity of modern relationships over time. A wife realizes her closest confidante is much more than that. A father tries to make his new lover into the image of his late wife. A lusty photographer confronts his own mortality. A couple’s long-anticipated anniversary vacation opens onto the past. A husband, a wife, a child, a boating accident: no harm done . . . and yet? Each of the twelve stories reveals another element in the agonizing nature of passion, diminished and yet sustained over time. This is a powerful work of fiction from one of our most gifted and subtle international writers at work today.
You can read more about Valentines at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
Award Title: The Separate Heart
by Simon Robson
If there is a thread running through Simon Robson’s brilliant collection of stories it is the notion of separateness – of adults from each other, of children from adult knowledge, of adult consciousness from the vividness of childhood. His protagonists are often unlikely – a cat, a man, met in a bar, who drove a chariot in Ben Hur, a girl who gets up very early – but these stories are satisfyingly long and devoid of modernist trickery; rather they are wise, funny, beautifully observed and somehow utterly true.
You can read more about The Separate Heart at Amazon.co.uk.
Filed under English literature, Fiction, Short stories, Shortlists, World literature
ReLit winners announced
Date: July 22, 2007 | Discussion: 2 Comments
The 2007 ReLit Awards winners have been announced. Founded in 2000 as an alternative to the major literary prizes, ReLit awards the best new fiction, short fiction and poetry published by independent Canadian publishers.
This year’s winners are:
NOVEL: Bow Grip
by Ivan E. Coyote
Ivan E. Coyote is one of North America’s most beguiling storytellers and the author of three story collections, including Loose End, which was shortlisted for the Ferro-Grumley Award for Fiction in 2006. Bow Grip, Coyote’s first novel, is a breathtaking story about love and loneliness; in it, a good-hearted, small-town mechanic struggles to deal with a wife who has left him for another woman until a used cello and an acquaintance’s suicide attempt compel him to make some changes in his life. With quiet authority, Bow Grip is about one man’s true rite of passage-trying to keep the ghosts of personal history at bay with a heart that’s as big as the endless prairie sky. (Book description)
You can read more about Bow Grip at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
SHORT FICTION: Gargoyles
by Bill Gaston
In this extraordinary new work, Gaston crafts his fiction around the idea of the “gargoyle†— the concrete representation of extremes of human emotions. In Gaston’s marvelous, riotous, Rabelaisian world, Gargoyles are physical manifestations of the disfigurements and contortions to which we human beings subject ourselves. Indeed, as Gaston wrote each story, he sketched out a distinct gargoyle to look down over it. For that reason, each story in this collection has a strange and unique guardian spirit whose sometimes benevolent, and sometimes malevolent, presence informs the characters and their actions. Gargoyles shows one of our best writers at the top of his form. (Book description)
You can read more about Gargoyles at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
POETRY: Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method
by Daniel Scott Tysdal
An energetic, funny, and experimental first poetry manuscript which takes emotional as well as formal risks. (Book description)
You can read more about Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
Filed under Canadian literature, English literature, Fiction, Independent publishers, Novels, Poetry, Short stories, Winners
Arac de Nyeko wins Caine Prize
Date: July 12, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
The Ugandan writer Monica Arac de Nyeko has been awarded the 2007 Caine Prize for her story “Jambula Tree”. The Caine Prize, awarded annually, was founded in 2000 to an African short story published in the English language. It is sometimes referred to as the “African Booker Prize”.
The winning work, a story about a lesbian relationship in a country where homosexuality is illegal, was described by the jury as “a witty and touching portrait of a community which is affected forever by a love which blossoms between two adolescents”.
While “Jambula Tree” remains unpublished or out of print in most English speaking countries, Ms Arac de Nyeko’s short story “Strange Fruit”, shortlisted for the 2004 Caine Prize, is available as part of the following selection:
Seventh Street Alchemy: A Selection of Writings from the Caine Prize for African Writing 2004
by Various
The 2004 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, Brian Chikwava’s “Seventh Street Alchemy” is featured alongside shortlisted stories from 2004, compositions from the Caine Prize’s March 2005 Workshop for African Writers, and Charles Mungoshi’s previously unpublished “Letter from a Friend” in this inspired collection of work from some of Africa’s most promising young and new writers. …
You can read more about Seventh Street Alchemy: A Selection of Writings from the Caine Prize for African Writing 2004 at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.
Filed under African literature, English literature, Fiction, Short stories, Winners, World literature
Yu Nagashima wins Oe award
Date: May 18, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Yu Nagashima’s short story collection “Yukon-chan no chikamichi” (”Yuko’s Shortcut”) has won the first Oe Award, named after the Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe. The collection will now be translated into English, following the literary award’s aims to promote Japanese literature overseas.
Filed under Asian literature, Fiction, Short stories, Winners, World literature
Caine Prize shortlist announced
Date: May 5, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Shortlist for the 2007 Caine Prize for African Writing has been announced. Three of the five authors shortlisted for this £10,000 prize are Nigerian. Winners will be known on Monday, 9th of July.
This year’s nominated authors are:
Uwem Akpan (Nigeria) for “My Parents Bedroom” (published in The New Yorker, June 12, 2006)
Monica Arac de Nyeko (Uganda) for “Jambula Tree” (from African Love Stories, Ayebia Clarke Publishing 2006)
E.C Osondu (Nigeria) for “Jimmy Carter’s Eyes” (AGNI Fiction Online 2006)
Henrietta Rose-Innes (South Africa) for “Bad Places” (published in New Contrast vol 31 no4, Spring 2003)
Ada Udechukwu (Nigeria) for “Night Bus” (published in The Atlantic Monthly, August 2006)