ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias on the short story prize worth six large
It is with great pleasure and pride that I hereby announce good old ReadingRoom is now in cahoots with The Sargeson Prize – New Zealand's richest short story award, which offers $6000 to the winner of the 2021 contest.
ReadingRoom will publish the winner of the open prize as well the secondary schools competition. The prize winners were formerly published by Landfall but Sargeson Prize convenor Catherine Chidgey got in touch earlier this year and asked whether ReadingRoom, which publishes a new short story every Saturday, might be interested in partnering up. I said: "Yes please."
The prize is sponsored by the University of Waikato. Generously, and splendidly, the university has boosted the previous first-place prize of $5000 to $6000 in 2021, to make it one grand more than the Sunday Star-Times annual short story award. As well, the Sargeson Prize awards $1000 for second place and $500 for third place. The winner of the secondary schools division for students aged between 16 and 18 receives $500 and a one-week summer residency at the University of Waikato, including accommodation, meals and mentoring.
It's yet another sign that short stories are enjoying something of a renaissance in New Zealand letters. ReadingRoom has published an exciting range of new and established writers these past two years and introduced their work to a wide audience. Two of the form's great masters, Owen Marshall and Elizabeth Smither, have new collections published this year. The four shortlisted books for the 2021 Ockham New Zealand prize for fiction includes Bug Life, a short story collection by Airini Beutrais. And the Māori Literature Trust is backing the 2021 Pikihuia Awards, open to first-time and emerging Māori writers, with prizes of $2000 to winners of four categories, including stories written in te reo. All entries will be considered for a short story anthology published by Huia. The deadline is soon, very soon: next Monday, April 12, at 5pm.
Entries are open now for the Sargeson Prize. They close on June 30. Writers wishing to enter need to fill out a form. More importantly, they need to impress this year's judge – Patricia Grace.
She says, “A good short story will capture the interest of the reader immediately, within the first paragraph or even the first sentence. And that beginning will hold out a promise of what’s to come…This might be something solved, something resolved, something not resolved, and more to think about once the story is over.”
She also says, “I would love for it to have scintillating language and to throw up strong images in the way that words are used. And if there is dialogue, for it to be sharp and recognisable.”
Well, yes. A consistent and unfortunate feature of many short stories sent my way for consideration at ReadingRoom is the poverty of the dialogue – they don't read like the things people say, they’re formal, they're flat, they read like writing. It's probably the central sin of stories that I'm unable to accept for publication. Unbelievable stories – as in, stories that fail to convince – are also common. A third theme is that very many stories are determinedly goddamned miserable. Characters are routinely abused, assaulted, disillusioned, killed, alone, separated, mad, and stuck tight in various states of torment like that ship in the Suez Canal.
I've accepted and published some of these stories, to my regret; it's hard to say no, and sometimes the point of being any kind of literary gatekeeper is to keep the gate open. As a consequence the standard of ReadingRoom stories has sometimes dipped and dived and so has readership. No one wants the company of miserable stories. But the best short stories have always found an audience; the three most popular stories I've published since ReadingRoom was created in 2019 are "Love Hotel" by Colleen Maria Lenihan, "The Black Monk" by Charlotte Grimshaw (a scarcely disguised portrait of her father, CK Stead; his response to it is recorded in her new memoir, The Mirror Book), and "Pātea Pools" by Airana Ngarewa.
The University of Waikato sent out a press release last week about the Sargeson prize. I was quoted as saying, "I think this is a very exciting period for short stories, and we are on the verge of discovering new ways of writing creative fiction and nonfiction. Some or a lot of this is going to be led by writers of colour including Māori writers, Pacific writers, writers from China, India, the Middle East, refugee writers and those from long-established families who have come from other places.”
Well, yes. I hereby make an open plea to writers who fit these profiles to send their work my way. The two best stories I've published this year are "Pātea Pools" by Airana Ngarewa (Ngāti Ruanui) and "The black belt" by Rajorshi Chakraborti, a Wellington writer born in Kolkata. And some of the best stories I've read this year are by Colleen Maria Lenihan (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi). Huia will publish her debut collection later in 2021. I had a really good time editing maybe a dozen of the stories. It's going to be a remarkable book. Sex, race, death, children, shame, pleasure, joy, strip clubs, cocaine, a woman wielding a taiaha – it's all there. Something solved, something unresolved.
