Competition 2019 – judging begins

Many thanks to everyone who entered our 2019 competition.  We will now roll up our sleeves, fasten our reading glasses on firmly, and start deliberations.  The differences in our opinions is always a reminder that competitions are sometimes about ‘hitting the spot’ with a majority of judges.  There will be hot discussion!

We plan to release our shortlist in mid-November.

National Poetry Day

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National Poetry Day, Richard Jago, William Shakespeare

 

 

With National Poetry Day in mind, we thought you might enjoy a poem from The Faber Book of Parodies, edited by Simon Brett, and written in tribute to our famous Bard.

 

HAMLET’S SOLILOQUY IMITATED

Richard Jago

To print, or not to print—that is the question.
Whether ‘tis better in a trunk to bury
The quirks and crotchets of outrageous fancy,
Or send a well-wrote copy to the press,
And by disclosing, end them? To print, to doubt
No more; and by one act to say we end
The head-ach, and a thousand natural shocks
Of scribbling frenzy—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To print—to beam
From the same shelf with Pope, in calf well bound!
To sleep, perchance, with Quarles—Ay there’s the rub –
For to what class a writer may be doom’d,
When he hath shuffled off some paltry stuff,
Must give us pause.—There’s the respect that makes
Th’ unwilling poet keep his piece nine years.
For who would bear th’ impatient thirst of fame,
The pride of conscious merit, and ‘bove all,
The tedious importunity of friends,
When as himself might his quietus make
With a bare inkhorn? Who would fardles bear?
To groan and sweat under a load of wit?
But that the tread of steep Parnassus’ hill,
That undiscover’d country, with whose bays
Few travellers return, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear to live unknown,
Than run the hazard to be known, and damn’d.
Thus critics do make cowards of us all.
And thus the healthful face of many a poem
Is sickly’d o’er with a pale manuscript;
And enterprisers of great fire, and spirit,
With this regard from Dodsley turn away,
And lose the name of authors.

 

Oxford delights: Jilly Cooper and Barbara Pym

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19 magazine, Barbara Pym, Barbara Pym Society, Georgette Heyer, Harriet, Jane and Prudence, Jane Austen, Jilly Cooper, Lisa & Co, Nancy Mitford, Oxford, Petticoat magazine, Virago

What’s the connection between Jilly Cooper and Barbara Pym apart from them being quintessentially English and writing splendidly funny novels?

Jilly Cooper’s introduction to the 2007 Virago edition of Barbara Pym’s Jane and Prudence, first published in 1953, tells the story of how she borrowed the novel quite by chance from a library and fell in love with it. ‘I shamefully lied to the librarians that I had lost it, paying a 3s 6d fine … over the years, as Barbara Pym replaced Nancy Mitford, Georgette Heyer, even Jane Austen, as my most loved author, I devoured all her books, but Jane and Prudence remains my favourite.’

Jilly Cooper was therefore the perfect and altogether delightful guest at a magnificent tea in Oxford, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Barbara Pym Society, as part of the Society’s weekend conference featuring Jane and Prudence.  Some of those attending might never have read a Jilly Cooper novel; others like myself have delicious youthful memories of revelling in her stories serialised in magazines like 19 and Petticoat, some of which were subsequently expanded into short romantic novels named after their heroines.

It’s in Harriet, partly set in Oxford and published in 1976, that we get a rather endearing echo of a scene in Barbara Pym’s Jane and Prudence; in both novels young girls remark to each other that thirty sounds so old but forty must be worse… whereupon they brood silently upon this horror!

Jilly Cooper might be more famous now for her ‘bonkbuster’ novels, starting with Riders in 1985, but perhaps the older among us will always have an affectionate soft spot for the irresistible heroes and scatty/naughty/dreamy/kind-hearted/unselfconfident/innocent heroines of the early romantic novels Bella, Emily, Octavia, Prudence, Harriet, Imogen and her collection of short stories Lisa & Co, first published as Love and Other Heartaches. They offered the escapist, romantic, comfort-with-comedy reading we sometimes needed when growing up.

As Jilly Cooper wrote of her short stories in 1981 ‘I cannot pretend that these stories are literature. They are written purely to entertain… Their mood is rooted firmly in the sixties, where we all lived it up… when the young were still optimistic about marriage, and believed that God was in his Heaven if all was Mr Right with the world.’

Jilly Cooper met Barbara Pym met just once – at the Hatchards Authors of the Year Party in 1979 – a wonderful memory always treasured. I have the same after meeting Jilly Cooper.

 

 

 

Anglican Women Novelists

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Agatha Christie, Alison Shell, Barbara Pym, Book of Common Prayer, Capital punishment, Charlotte Bronte, Charlotte M Yonge, Charlotte Maria Tucker, Church of England, Dorothy L Sayers, East Anglia, Elizabeth Goudge, Evelyn Underhill, Gaudy Night, Iris Murdoch, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Judith Maltby, Lambeth Palace Library, Margaret Oliphant, Monica Furlong, Murder Must Advertise, Noel Streatfeild, P D James, Prayer Book Society, Rose Macaulay, Shirley, The Nine Tailors, Unnatural Death

There have been more Anglican women novelists than you might think. 13 of them feature in Anglican Women Novelists – from Charlotte Brontë to PD James, edited by Judith Maltby and Alison Shell, and published only this year. Two of the ninevoices were at its launch in the magnificent setting of Lambeth Palace Library in July.

The editors explain that to keep the book of manageable size they restricted it to writers who were British and deceased. But questions of selection are inevitable. Iris Murdoch is here? Yes, because although she lost her faith in Christ’s divinity, and was drawn towards Buddhism, her world was still infused by Anglicanism and she still attended Anglican services. The author of the Iris Murdoch essay (Peter S Hawkins) entitles it “Anglican Atheist”.

And why no Jane Austen, in whose novels the C of E features so much, when Charlotte Brontë gets in? Because between the two lie Catholic Emancipation and the repeals of the Test and Corporation Acts, meaning that other denominations could now take their place freely on the national stage: Anglicanism had lost its ‘default’ position as the nation’s faith and was becoming more of a denomination that you made a positive choice to join.

The essay on Charlotte Brontë (by Sara L Pearson) argues how much her life was rooted in the C of E and how much of her work does too. Shirley, we read, shows her “longing for the Church of England’s preservation and reformation”. In Jane Eyre the male representatives of the Church, Mr Brocklehurst and St John Rivers, are hardly role models, and their failings are compared with (and perhaps compensated for by) the qualities of female characters around them. Also, “the Book of Common Prayer haunts the pages of Jane Eyre … not only for its contents but also as a physical object”: it will have formed such an ever-present part of her childhood.

‘Dorothy L Sayers – God and the Detective’ is the title of Jessica Martin’s piece. She speaks of the role justice and punishment play in her detective novels. She makes the important point that Golden Age detective novels were written in the time when the hangman awaited the unmasked murderer: in that sense the stakes were higher, the ultimate retribution is always in the background.   Sayers had trouble with this, we read: she had “increasing unease with narrative arcs which must privilege orderly acts of justice over the wilder power of mercy”. She sees the limitations of this, and justice must come from elsewhere: “her plots have an invisible protagonist, and his name is Jehovah”. The essay then analyses Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors, Unnatural Death and Gaudy Night in this light.

The final essay is ‘PD James – “Lighten our Darkness”’ by Alison Shell.   She compares PD James to other Golden Age detective writers, principally Agatha Christie, concluding, “For all her own homage to Christie, her novels are far more violent and desolate than her predecessor’s; if Christie is the quintessential Golden Age detective novelist, James’ fallen world locates her within an Iron Age of crime fiction.” Evil is a reality: and the essay speculates on the degree to which PD James saw evil as a force in its own right. Her novels are steeped in the Anglican Church and its tradition. Churches (in a bleak East Anglia) provide the settings for many key events. PD James herself was a lover of the beauty of its traditional language and was a great supporter of the Prayer Book Society, set up to keep alive the glorious heritage of the Book of Common Prayer. Quotations from it recur in her work.

The other authors covered in the book are Charlotte Maria Tucker, Margaret Oliphant, Charlotte M Yonge, Evelyn Underhill, Rose Macaulay, Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Goudge, Noel Streatfeild and Monica Furlong.

Published by t&tclark, ISBN 978-0-567-68676-3 RRP £27-99

 

 

 

Our Second Guest Contributor : Writer Sara Kellow

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Entering Competitions, Guest Writer, Helen Yendall's Blog About Writing, Kate Atkinson, The Guardian

With our second short story competition up and running, we thought we’d invite the winner of our first one to offer some encouraging words to those considering entering.

 

In a recent interview in The Guardian, bestselling author Kate Atkinson describes winning a writing competition as the moment that launched her as a published author. She doesn’t say, but I’d be willing to bet that wasn’t the first competition she ever entered.

Whether you win or not, writing for competitions is the best way to fast-track an improvement to your writing. I discovered this for myself several years ago when I stumbled across Helen Yendall’s Blog About Writing which happened to be running a 100-word story competition with a category for new writers. I’d never shown anything I’d written to anyone before and the idea of offering up my words to be judged made me feel ill. Cringing with embarrassment, I confronted my fear and entered, only to feel worse a week later when I was shortlisted. My story was on the blog for ANYONE to read. The horror! I couldn’t help noticing, though, that the sky didn’t fall in. Nobody pointed and laughed at me in the street; in fact everything was just the same, except that next time it was much easier.

Even though that early shortlisting turned out to be beginner’s luck, I’d gained something valuable. If you are shy about sharing your work, you should definitely enter competitions. A story that disappears without trace, no one needs to know about, but a shortlisting – that’s a tremendous confidence boost. Writing to a set word-count helps you focus. You have to reread your work and, by cutting out anything unnecessary, hone it to a new level of precision. I once misread the rules to a competition and wrote a 500-word story, which I was quite pleased with, only to find when I entered that it should have been 250. I cut out half the words and the resulting story has been shortlisted twice. One more edit and who knows? That’s the great thing about competitions. It can feel like rejection when you don’t get anywhere, but you can learn from the experience. Always read the winners and figure out why the judges chose them. Then go back to your own work with fresh ideas and try again.

Thank you, Sara. Your story, Laptops and Coffin Lids, was a worthy winner against strong competition. That intriguing title didn’t do it any harm, either.

It’s comforting to discover that so many writers seem to suffer from shrinking-violet syndrome, and important to remember that a professional writer is a writer who refuses to give up…

 

Our Sarah wins Colm Tóibín award

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Colm Toibin International Short Story Competition 2019

One of our nine voices is frustratingly modest, but the other eight are BURSTING WITH PRIDE.

Our much-loved and madly talented Sarah has just won…..the Colm Tóibín International Short Story Award!

She won with her warm-hearted and poignant story, ‘Dinosaurs Rule’.  The Wexford Literary Festival judges clearly saw what we see – the lucidity, insightfulness and generosity of her writing.

Oh, we are so proud and so happy for her!  It will be extra crisps and chocolate cake at our next get-together…

Here she is: Sarah Dawson

What Lies Buried by Margaret Kirk

I have just finished Margaret Kirk’s second Highland Noir book What lies Buried.

Margaret hooks you, in the first chapter, with a corpse uncovered on an Inverness construction site. With a bullet hole in its skull. A cold case, obviously, since it’s wearing World War Two dog tags, but an intriguing one, since the bones date from long after the end of the war. And why were they buried in a farm midden? Then, having made you wonder about the who-and-why of these seventy-year-old bones, you are plunged into an even darker crime: a ten-tear-old girl has been spirited away from a friend’s birthday party and has been missing for ten days.

The police team led by DI Lukas Mahler is under pressure: from the distraught parents, their superior officers, the press – and their own desperate feelings of responsibility and inadequacy. Not helped when the problem unexpectedly escalates.

Lukas is a detective with sharp suits, but no ego. An early morning runner with his own childhood trauma, who struggles to care for a mother whose mind is failing, it’s no wonder he is stalked by migraine headaches: an ice-pick of pain tapping at the base of his skull that tablets refuse to shift. Not that Lukas will let that stop him pursuing the bad guys, even if it earns him cracked ribs.

I enjoyed the quality of the writing, from fondly remembered Scottish words – and guiltily scoffed bakery products with a high-calorie content – to descriptions of Inverness and its steel and granite weather. Memories rushed back of pebble-dashed bungalows, with walls the colour of three-day-old porridge. I especially admired the picture of an alarmed construction worker belting up the track, hi-vis jacket billowing out behind him like a bairn playing at superheroes. 

The characters are real people, with acid indigestion, a tendency to devour Jaffa cakes when stressed, and the misguided conviction that a Homer Simpson air freshener will banish the stink of cigarette smoke and fish and chip wrappers from inside of an unloved car. DS Ian Ferguson, a conscientious and loyal colleage, is a slob at heart. The sarcastic, shifty and jealous DE Andy Black clearly means trouble for Mahler.

Her women are good, from the pregnant CSI, easing herself from a muddy trench full of old bones, her pregnancy bump straining against the white Teletubby suit, to DC Nazreen Khan, who is suitably polite when slapped down for giving constructive advice to a superior, but no pushover:

‘Absolutely.’ She clicks her seat belt into place and gives him an earnest I’ll-try-harder kind of smile. ‘No disrespect, sir.’

‘Fine. We’ll leave it there, then.’

‘But, seeing we’re talking about respect…if I catch you staring at my tits again, you’ll get my knee where it hurts most. And then I’ll hit you with a harassment charge. Sir.‘

A disturbing feature is an on-line group of vigilantes, convinced they can do a better job than the police. A worrying glimpse into the world of warped minds and the harm social media can do.

The plot has more complexities than a piece of Fair Isle knitting, and a twist approaching the end almost made me throw down my needles. There is even an intriguing ‘H’ figure lurking in the background. The abduction of a small girl doesn’t make comfortable reading. It is every parent’s nightmare. But the book is enlightening on the toll taken on those investigating such hideous events, and the extent to which they genuinely care.

Margaret’s debut novel, Shadow Man, won the Good Housekeeping First Novel Competition in 2016 and was published by Orion in 2017. Proof that entering competitions can work, and that reading books that result from them can be totally gripping.

 

Things I heard Simon Mawer say

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'The Glass Room', 1968, Arthropods, Czech Centre, Czechoslovakia, HG Wells, Hitchhiking, Man Booker Prize, Mendel's Dwarf, Moody Blues, Oxford, Prague Spring, RAF, Simon Mawer, Warsaw Pact, Zoology

This week I heard the author Simon Mawer speak about writing: specifically about his novel Prague Spring, but also his other Czech-based books The Glass Room and Mendel’s Dwarf. Prague Spring is set against the events in Czechoslovakia in the fateful summer of 1968, leading to the invasion by the armies of the Warsaw Pact.

Four things of writerly interest in my mind from that talk:

He was asked what effect having The Glass Room shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2009 had for his career. It benefited hugely, he said, sales went right up, though not as much as if he’d won! He was easy about not actually winning that year, he assured us, though he was just a bit galled when Hilary won it again two years later …

One good thing about being a novelist, he told us, is that you can reinvent your own life. The example he gave was how in the summer of 1968 he had hitchhiked around Europe with a male friend. When in Bavaria they had discussed whether to cross into Czechoslovakia, then enjoying the best days of the Prague Spring, but had decided to go to Greece instead: a decision he had ever since regretted. In Prague Spring two of his main characters set out from England to hitchhike across Europe – a male student (as he had been) James, but this time with an attractive female companion, Ellie; and this time events lead them to cross the Iron Curtain (and thus into the story) rather than go to the Italian sun as planned.

He used more of his own direct experience in James and Ellie’s story. When he and his friend had been hitching they were given a lift by a German lady harpsichordist who interrogated him where he was studying, and when he gave the name of his Oxford college she asked if he knew a particular law professor there, whose friend she was. In Prague Spring he retells this story, with James and Ellie meeting a lady cellist who, likewise, is a friend of a don at his Oxford college.

Perhaps less commonly for novelists, Simon Mawer has a scientific background: his degree was in zoology and for many years he worked as a biology teacher. This shows in a remarkable simile in one of the extracts he read to us on Tuesday: a Russian tank lost in the streets of Prague is likened first to a Martian in HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds but then, more uniquely, to a reptile or arthropod, the muzzle of its gun being a proboscis, which “shifts back and forth, as though sniffing the air, perhaps even trying to work out where the humans have gone.” Not an image that would have occurred to those of us with English literature or history backgrounds, perhaps.

In thrillers, he reminded us (and in whodunits, come to think of it), everything that happens must be related to the plot. But life, of course, isn’t like that. Lots of things happen that don’t link up with anything else. But in a novel you can explore these, and tell them for their own sake. One bizarre episode that features in Prague Spring but is not essential to the plot is the appearance of the Moody Blues. They actually were in Prague at this time, and the day before the Russian invasion they were filmed performing on the city’s famous Charles Bridge. Their appearance in the novel adds colour and interest and tells a true story, and you’re glad it’s there, but in a thriller you’d be wondering what its significance was.

(You can see this surreal performance on YouTube – go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4_xCA4IO7U , to see these Brummies miming Nights in White Satin to adoring fans on an otherwise empty Charles Bridge for a Franco-Belgian TV programme. It’s strange to think that 24 hours later that area was busy with invading soldiers.)

Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction Dept: In his interview Simon Mawer asked us to reflect on the fact that once the invasion happened, the British Embassy somehow arranged for the Moody Blues to be flown out of the country, apparently in an RAF transport plane. How was it, he asked, that in all the chaos and busyness of those events, someone managed to persuade the new Warsaw Pact controllers of the country to allow an RAF plane into Czechoslovak air space to evacuate a group of British pop singers? Would you dare put such an unlikely happening in a novel?

The interview was organised by the Czech Centre at the Czech Embassy in London. Simon was interviewed by Prague-based journalist David Vaughan, followed by a lively Q&A session with the audience.  Thanks, Czech Centre!

Prague Spring was featured on this blog at https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2018/12/10/prague-spring/ and The Glass Room at https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/the-glass-room-revisited/ . You can listen to all of Simon Mawer’s talk at https://soundcloud.com/czech-centre-london/simon-mawer-prague-spring .

‘Swanking’ – unavoidable for authors?

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Mary Killen, The Spectator

‘Swanking is still unacceptable’ says Mary Killen, on the (always enjoyable) Your Problems Solved page of this week’s The Spectator magazine. She is replying to an anxious letter from a reader  who would like to give copies of his/her two  ‘respectably published’ novels to neighbours and acquaintances who are unaware of the novels’ existence, but worries that these gifts put the recipients in an awkward position.

There is something altogether endearing about this concern for the feelings of others and the appeal for advice in general ‘about trumpet-blowing, however subtly done’. The writer says that in his/her younger days ‘swanking’ was considered the worst of sins …

Mary comes up with a creative solution to the problem perfectly tailored to this particular correspondent. But for most of us it may be that swanking is now a necessity – part and parcel of publishing and marketing novels, however much it goes against the grain.

 

Writing Competitions to Enter in June

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Audio Arcadia's General Fiction Short Story Competition, Bath Flash Fiction Award, Bath Novel Award, British Czech & Slovac Association Competition for Short Stories and non-fiction, British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition, Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, Divine Chocolate Poetry Competition, Hastings Literary Festival Short Story Competition, Impress Prize for New Writers, Ninevoices' Short Story Competition, Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, The Moth Short Story Prize, VS Pritchett Memorial Prize, Wells Festival of Literature

This is a BIG MONTH for us, since we will be launching one of ninevoices’ rare and sought-after competitions on JUNE 21st. Please WATCH OUT FOR DETAILS on that date!

Meanwhile you can hone your skills on some of the other competitions out there – nobody said you need only enter one.

There’s just time to squeeze in for the Bath Novel Award deadline of June 2nd. They want the first 5,000-words of a novel, plus a synopsis. Prizes: 1st £2,500; 2nd, agent introductions and manuscript feedback; 3rd, Cornerstones’ course. Entry fee: £25. Details: bathnovelaward.co.uk

Bath Flash Fiction Award – a thrice-yearly competition for flash fiction up to 300 words. Prizes: £1,000; £300; £100, Entry fee: £9. Closing date for current competition 10 June. Details: bathflashfictionaward.com

Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting for full-length (at least an hour) new stage plays written in English, which have not been published or professionally performed. Prizes: £16,000; 2x£8,000. FREE ENTRY. Deadline 5 June. Details: http://www.writeaplay.co.uk

Divine Chocolate Poetry Competition for poems on the theme ‘how can chocolate change the world? From poets aged 7-11;  12-16; and 17-plus. Prizes: Divine chocolate and goodies. Free entry. Closing date: 14 June. Details: http://www.divinechocolate.com/uk/poetry

Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize for poetry (up to five poems), fiction and life writing, up to 3,000 words. Prizes: £1,000 in each category, plus publication in Wasafiri. Entry fee: £6 for one category; £10 for two categories; £15 for three categories. Closing date 28 June. Details: http://www.wasafiri.org

VS Pritchett Memorial Prize for unpublished short stories between 2,000 and 4,000 words. Prizes: £1,000, plus publication. Entry fee: £5. Closing date: 28 June. Details: http://www.rslit.org

British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition for any kind of fantasy short stories, horror, sf, magic realism, etc., up to 5,000 words. Prizes: £100, £50, £20, membership of BFS and publication in BFS Horizons. Entry fee: £5 (free for BFS members). Closing date: 30 June. Details: http://www.britishfantasysociety.co.uk

Audio Arcadia’s General Fiction Short Story Competition for stories up to 5,000 words. Prizes: Anthology publication, royalties. Entry fee: £5.50. Closing date: 30 June. Details: http://www.audioarcadia.com

Hastings Literary Festival Short Story Competitions, for short story, poem and flash fiction on the festival theme ‘In Other Words‘ – an exploration of difference and otherness. Prizes: £100; £40; £25 in each category. Entry fee: £5. Closing date: 30 June. Details: http://www.HastingsLitFest.org

Impress Prize for New Writers are looking for full-length debuts from unpublished fiction and non-fiction writers. Submit proposal and sample chapter, 6,000 words maximum. Prizes: £500 advance and publication. Entry fee: £25. Closing date: 30 June. Details: http://www.impress-books.co.uk

Wells Festival of Literature short stories between 1,000 and 2,000 words; poems up to 40 lines; stories for children. Prizes: £750, £300, £200, local prize of £100 in each category. Entry fee: £6. Closing date: 30 June. Details: http://www.wellsfestivalofliterature.org.uk

The Moth Short Story Prize 2019 for unpublished stories of up to 5,000 words on any subject. Prizes: 1st, 3,000 Euros; 2nd, Writing Retreat at Circle of Misse in France, plus 250 Euros; 3rd 1,000 Euros. Entry fee: 12 Euros. Closing date: 30 June.  Details: wwwthemothmagazine.com

Last, but by no means least, is the British Czech & Slovak Association Competition for short stories and non-fiction – up to 2,000-words – exploring the links between Britain and the Czech/Slovak Republics at any time. The suggested, but optional, theme for 2019 is ‘1989’. As has been said before, this does not have to be a worthy, scholarly piece (though please feel free, if that’s your thing…) but could equally be inspired by a honeymoon, a student trip, or even a hen-night, in Prague. By a haunting among those atmospheric buildings around Wenceslas Square. By a cold war spy tale. A memory of trying to make dumplings… ENTRY IS FREE. Prizes: £400, £150, publication in the British Czech & Slovak Review. Plus an invitation to a glittering dinner in London at which you will be presented with your prize.

As ever, let me urge you to check the details before entry. There’s a good spread of competitions this month, and I’m personally greatly tempted by the idea of receiving a hamper of Divine Chocolate… Just the thing to munch on while composing your 150,000-word masterpiece.