Short story awards win a career turning point
The Sunday Star-Times Short Story Awards is returning for its 32nd year.
Entries for the prestigious competition open soon, with last year’s judges returning. Novelist Stephanie Johnson, one of the cofounders of the Auckland Writers Festival, will judge the open section. Writer Paula Morris, convenor of the Academy of New Zealand Literature and a creative writing teacher, will judge the secondary schools section, and Star-Times editor Jonathan Milne will judge the non-fiction entries.
The competition has helped launch the careers of many New Zealand writers including Eleanor Catton, Carl Nixon, Norman Bilbrough, Barbara Anderson, Linda Olsson, Sarah Quigley and Andre Ngapo.
For Sarah Laing, winning the open division was ‘‘pivotal’’ in launching a flourishing career.
Her story The Wrong Shoe won the top award in 2006, and the encouragement she took from that win was so important that it features in her graphic memoir Mansfield and Me, which comes out in October.
‘‘I had written an awful lot, but it was a major turning point for me,’’ says the author of Dead People’s Music and The Fall of Light. Laing had been published in literary journals but was still a virtual unknown, with a stack of rejected manuscripts at home.
‘‘I threw my entry in the letterbox without much hope.’’
To be shortlisted was exciting, but winning ‘‘was this endorsement – Owen Marshall awarded me first prize’’.
As well as earning a cash prize and a session with longtime book editor Harriet Allan, Laing found she was elevated from the dreaded slush pile when she submitted the manuscript for her first book, the short story collection Coming Up Roses.
From being a ‘‘frustrated, wannabe novelist’’ she became a writer known by key people in the publishing industry, which made a difference.
‘‘I was on my way as a proper author,’’ she says.
Laing’s tips for awards entrants include submitting stories to ‘‘ruthless’’ editing, and reading widely.
‘‘New Zealand has this wonderful rich history of short story writers. Read a lot.’’
And, although the cliche makes her laugh, Laing says ‘‘never give up’’.
You never know what may come of entering.
The Sunday Star-Times Short Story Awards 2016 open next week. Register at stuff.co.nz/ShortStoryAwards.