ASHAM WINNERS  AT CAMBRIDGE WORDFEST


Janey Huber, one of the winners of the last Asham Award, tries out the limelight

One of the happy consequences of winning the Asham award was that Marian Garvey, Lois McEwan and I were invited to take part in an event at the Cambridge Wordfest with established author Kate Pullinger. Our brief was to discuss writing short stories and the prospects of getting them published.

This was a new experience for me: to be one of the writers rather than one of the readers.

The panel discussion was at 1.00 on Saturday. The four of us met beforehand, and Kate ran through our biographies, which had strangely altered since we last recorded them. Those drama workshops no longer seemed so important…Lois tried reading the ‘backward’ portions of dialogue in her story, but as she sounded as if she was having a fit, we decided she had better leave them out. An astonishing number of people filed into the lecture theatre. These were not just my friends and relatives, though I do live in Cambridge. Kate introduced us with grace and aplomb, and I got up and squeaked through the start of my Asham story. Lois and Marian read parts of theirs, then we began the discussion.

We each had differing views about the role of the short story in our writing lives. It seems to be Marian’s natural milieu; Lois has recently moved from novels to a shorter form; I see myself primarily as a novelist. We agreed that one overwhelmingly positive thing about short stories is that you receive feedback as a writer. Being published in an anthology like the Asham collection is a very affirming experience. My own view is that short stories are increasingly popular among readers. When only small slices of time are available in the day, a short story is a dense and thought-provoking diversion, complete in itself, unlike a a novel, which can be difficult to escape from after a single chapter. This belief was confirmed for me when a friend of mine bought ‘Is This What You Want’ at Waterstones, quite unaware that I had written one of the stories in it.

The audience had fifteen minutes for questions, which passed too quickly – their questions were as interesting as our answers. Then, to our amazement, a table was set up and we found ourselves signing books that had been sold after the session. The audience must have wanted to know what happened next in the stories.

I think I speak for all three of us in saying that winning one of the Asham prizes opens doors. I am tremendously grateful to the Trust for its efforts in inviting submissions and selecting the stories for the Asham anthology, and it was a pleasure to take part in the Asham event at this year’s Cambridge Wordfest.

SECOND PRIZE

Lois McEwan
Mrs Laidlaw's Event Horizon

Lois McEwan is a freelance sub-editor working mainly on The Sunday Times and The Times. Her poetry has been published by Virago in the New Poets anthology, broadcast on ABC Radio in Australia and won an award in the Scottish International Poetry Competition. She is from Edinburgh and, after working on newspapers in Hong Kong and Australia, now lives in Westcliff with her husband and two sons.

 

THIRD PRIZE

Janey Huber
The Serpent's Child

Janey Huber is half Dutch and half Canadian, was brought up in Switzerland, and has lived in America, England and Oman. She has now settled in Cambridge and earns an income as a medical journalist. She is working on a novel about Geneva.

RUNNERS UP
Katie Barron
The Chickens and the Lettuces

After studying classical languages, I was a financial journalist in London and then a teacher. I have spent time in Dublin, Trieste and the Pyrenees and am now studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. One of my dreams for the future is to have my own vegetable garden.

Anna Britten
The Girl from the Dotcom

Anna is a freelance arts journalist living in Bath, having spent several years in London working at a record company and then for Time Out Magazine, and a stint in Paris (an experience which inspired this story). She used to write short stories as a teenager, but have only started doing so again in the last year. She got a top ten placing in this year's Frome Festival Short Story Competition, with a story called "Put The Radiator On, Get The Coffee Going" . She is married with a son.

Brenda Eisenberg
Under the Black Hat

Brenda Eisenberg has wanted to be a writer since the age of five, but somehow became pleasantly preoccupied with the world of educational publishing until the age of thirty-five. Five years ago she left her job to do an MBA degree, but when every career profiling test returned ‘Writer’ as the result, she remembered her first ambitions. She now works as a freelance consultant and is completing her first novel, entitled Ten Billion Square Feet of Perfection. Her second novel is set in the orthodox Jewish community of South Africa during the apartheid era. She was born in South Africa and has lived in London for the past fifteen years.

Victoria Marvin
Honey Storms

I grew up in a small town by the coast, in the North Island of New Zealand. I went to university in Wellington, where I studied Environmental Science, and where I met my fiance, Carl. We left New Zealand in 2003 to live here in the UK, and travel around Europe. I currently work at Transport for London, but will soon be off to do a bit more travelling. I try to divide my time between working and travelling, writing, and enjoying life on this side of the world

Gabi is 48 and currently living in Devon. She knew she wanted to be a writer at the age of three (when her grandmother taught her to read) but allowed her mind and hands to be distracted by many other occupations in the intervening years. During 2006 her stories were also shortlisted in the Chapter One Promotions and Leaf Books competitions.

Kathryn Simmonds

Pentecost

Kathryn Simmonds was born in Hertfordshire in 1972 and now lives in north London. Her stories have appeared in magazines and been broadcast on Radio 4. She also writes poetry and won the 2006 Poetry London competition. Her favourite writers include Flannery O’Conner, Bob Dylan and Frank O’Hara.

The commissioned writers for the sixth award collection Is This What You Want?, available from Bloomsbury are Rachel Cusk, Patricia Duncker, Tessa Hadley, Nancy Lee, Emily Perkins and Kate Pullinger

About the commissioned writers

Read the reviews

News from Asham writers

Nasim Marie Jafry
Thanks for your email about the Asham Award - I was shortlisted a couple of times, although it is a good few years since I entered! I have been instead occupied with my novel, which I'm delighted to say will be published by Friday Fiction in March 2008. Details are here if you are curious.
http://www.thefridayproject.co.uk/books/view/?id=65
Maybe I will go back to short stories one of these days . . .


Mo McAuley
"Just to let Asham know…….my story Something Has To Happen, which was in the longlist for the 2006/7 Asham Award, became a prize-winning Commended in the Writer of the Year Competition in 2007 and my short story collection The A-Z Man will be published by Bluechrome in Spring 2008.”

Carys Davies:
Carys Davies's first short story collection Some New Ambush, published last October, has been long listed with nine other books for the 2008 Wales Book of the Year Prize. Carys won second prize in the 2005 Asham Award.   (Interestingly, two of the novels are by writers who have appeared in previous Asham anthologies, Trezza Azzopardi and Tessa Hadley:) Some New Ambush was described by Boyd Tonkin of The Independent, as a “darkly funny and unsettling collection.”

Carys has also been a runner-up in the 2005 Bridport Prize and in the 2006 Fish Short Histories’ Prize. She is married with four children and lives in Lancaster.

Some New Ambush is published by Salt at £8.99.

2008 Wales Book of the Year longlist
Trezza Azzopardi Winterton Blue novel (Picador)
Kitti Harri Hector's Talent novel (Honno)
Malcolm Pryce Don't Cry for Me Aberystwyth novel (Bloomsbury)
Tom Bullough The Claude Glass novel (Sort Of Books)
Robert Lewis Swansea Terminal novel (Serpent's Tail)
Nia Wyn Blue Sky July novel (Seren)
John Barnie Trouble in Heaven poetry (Gomer)
Carys Davies Some New Ambush short stories (Salt Publishing)
Dannie Abse The Presence memoir (Hutchinson)
Tessa Hadley The Master Bedroom novel (Jonathan Cape)

Julia Bohanna:
"Being shortlisted in the last Asham spurred me on to write more frequently and take myself more seriously. After an excellent writers' development course in Sussex, I made a plan and set about making things happen. I continued as a journalist, which is excellent discipline - I also entered competitions. This year, I won the Woman and Home Short Story Competition. To have been picked from the pile by such a prestigious competition as the Asham, had given me the nerve to believe that perhaps I could write. Part of the problem is keeping motivated, keeping fresh and invigorated by one own's writing. Someone else believing in you, people you respect, goes a long way. It would be interesting to know how many other shortlisted writers have been encouraged in this way. Also, I feel that the comments returned with my shortlisted story at the time were invaluable -wish more literary competitions would do the same."

Sally Hinchcliffe
I was a finalist in 2005 with In Heaven there is no Beer, and I thought I'd let you know that my novel, The Year List, has been bought by Maria Rejt at Pan Macmillan and will be coming out in Spring 2008.

Vanessa Gebbie
Salt Publishing are to bring out a collection of my work in early 2008. My first collection, and I have to thank Asham/Charleston for the wonderful Slam event, and subsequent publicity for my writing.
 
Vicky Grut was a finalist in the 1999 Asham Award and has recently finished her debut novel, Unbound, which has been taken up by a London agent.
The story focuses on the emotional battles within a tight-knit group travelling through Greece and southern Italy, trying to get backing for a production of Prometheus Bound.   Vicky, who lives in South London, teaches creative writing at South Bank University and reads manuscripts for The Literary Consultancy.

She is also running a series of three writing workshops in London this summer with the novelist Kathy Page.. The first is on May 24. For further information, visit www.londonworkshops.com

Let's hear how you get on. Email us on camilla@ashamaward.com if you have something published. And don't forget to mention the Asham Award in your biog.