The Commonwealth Short Story Prize

In 1949, as the British Empire began to fade into history, The government of the UK and those of seven former colonies came together to form the modern Commonwealth, an association of free and equal members co-operating in the pursuit of peace, liberty and progress.

Today, the Commonwealth has 54 members and the Commonwealth Foundation, a UK-based development organisation, works towards a world in which every person on the planet is able to participate in, and contribute to, the sustainable development of peaceful and equitable societies.

Commonwealth Writers is a cultural initiative from the Commonwealth Foundation. Commonwealth Writers both develops the craft of individual writers and also builds communities of emerging voices, so that, individually and collectively, writers can work for social change, and influence, directly and indirectly, the decision-making processes which affect their lives. Commonwealth Writers wants the writers it unearths to inspire others, especially in their local communities, and it challenges selected authors to take part in on-line residencies, and on-the-ground literary activities.

Commonwealth Writers runs the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. This aims to identify talented emerging writers and to promote the best new writing from across the Commonwealth, thus developing literary connections worldwide.  

The Short Story Prize is awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction, of between 2000-5000 words. The language of the competition is English. Writers can submit stories translated into English from other languages.

Entries can be submitted from five regions: Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. The regional divisions are intended to give writers in countries with poor publishing infrastructure a fairer chance to compete with those in countries where there are more opportunities. Within Asia, you are eligible to enter if you are a citizen of one of the following countries: Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, India, Malaysia, Maldives, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka,

There will be five winners, one from each region. One regional winner will be selected as the overall winner. The overall winner will receive £5,000 (approx US$7,750) and the remaining four regional winners £2,500 (approx US$3,785). Translators of winning stories will also receive prize money.  If the overall winner is a translation into English, the translator will receive £2,000 (approx US$3,100).  Translators will receive £1,000 (approx US$1,150) for regional winners.

The 2014 judging panel will be chaired by Ellah Allfrey, deputy chair of the council of the Caine Prize for African Writing, formerly deputy editor of the UK-based literary magazine Granta and senior editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House, in London. She will chair an international judging panel; this will make the final selection. The regional judges will be announced on 1 October. Experienced readers will assist the named judges in selecting the long lists.

The 2014 Short Story Prize will open for entry on-line on 1 October 2013 and close on 30 November 2013. Entry will be via www.commonwealthwriters.org where you can view the eligibility criteria, and the entry rules.

So new Asian writers: Get writing! Tell the world what great stories, and what great storytellers, we have on this continent! If you need inspiration,  click about on www.commonwealthwriters.org, it’s a great website, with a mix of interesting tips and advice, discussion, and constructively provocative comment.

500 Words From Julian Kim

 

500 Words From is a series of guest posts from authors.  Here, Julian Kim talks about  his first novel, SAINTS: Song of Winds.  This is a fast-paced, multicultural, quasi-historical mystery-thriller that combines a race-against-the-clock adventure, with contemporary concerns about the weather, with a love story, to produce a wild and satisfying romp.

Julian Kim was born in Seoul, but as a child he lived in other places in Asia, as well as in Europe, and in the Americas. Thus from an early age he was fascinated by cultural diversity, and as an adult he continued his nomadic existence, living in New York, London, Hong Kong and Seoul.

Julian now lives in Singapore, where, in 2012,  SAINTS: Song of Winds was the winner of a competition sponsored by the National Arts Council, to promote the works of unpublished authors.  It was subsequently published by Straits Times Press: http://www.stpressbooks.com.sg/home.php

So: 500 words from Julian Kim

With SAINTS: Song of Winds  I was hoping to create something which would be fun to write and  fun to read. In addition, I wanted to fuse modern and historical elements of Asian and Latin American cultures - the core action occurs mainly in China and Peru, with meaningful scenes also taking place in Korea, India, Mongolia, Hong Kong and Singapore.

As we all know, our world is full of stories – there is so much history, so many nations and regions and cultures. Past human civilisation has left us so many traces - superstitions, fairy tales, legends and myths. Granted, much of this wealth has been lost in the mists of time, but the gaps in our knowledge allow us both to imagine what-ifs, and also to wonder about the borders between fiction and non-fiction.  Without a doubt, Asia offers a vast and rich depository of history and civilisation from which we can mine and spin a million what-if factual fictions.

The same is true for the world of unexplained phenomena. We often hear stories about the paranormal, about the extraterrestrial, and about bizarre creatures. I think most of us can agree that there's still much that we don't understand about our planet, the universe, and the realms of the physical and the spiritual, especially as they relate to the human mind.

So with all this wealth of secrets and mysteries surrounding Asia and the world we live in, I could not resist creating a world of somewhat plausible histories, mysteries and uncommon abilities.

SAINTS: Song of Winds begins two thousand years ago in China, when a geomancer leads a tribe out of the tomb of Emperor Qin. One thousand years later, in Peru, the immense treasure of the Incas is lost to the world.  And today, a strange terracotta soldier is unearthed in the ancient capital of China.

In my novel SAINTS is an acronym standing for Syndicated Alliance of Irregular and Talented Specialists. It is a secretive organisation whose purpose is to save nations, when all else fails. The members of SAINTS look like ordinary people and behave like ordinary people, most of the time. But they have very special talents.

There’s a Korean boy who teaches at school and can secretly control the winds. There’s an American university student who studies animals and discovers she can heal people. There’s a young Singaporean billionaire who plays the financial markets and who possesses an unnatural intuition. There’s an old Mexican man in Manhattan who sells hot dogs and can see your past. And they are all connected in a web of fate that stretches from ancient China to the mountains of present-day Peru.

Using sheer intellect and mastering their subtle supernatural talents,  the four heroes  join forces with the leader of Peru to free the country from a mysterious villain who is causing havoc with the weather.  But before they can save the day they must unlock the cryptic codes of Emperor Qin’s tomb and also find the lost treasure of the Incas. Somehow, they realise, the tomb and the treasure are connected.

In essence, SAINTS: Song of Winds can be loosely described as a kind of Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code, in an Asian and Latin American context. Key events include monstrous battles with lightning and tornadoes in the desert plains of Peru, desperate scrambles through deadly chambers in the tomb complex of Emperor Qin, and an epic cavalry battle between the ancient forces of China and Mongolia.

The Documentation Center Of Cambodia

The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) in Phnom Penh enables research into the years 1975 – 1979, when the Khmer Rouge killed almost two million Cambodians; its dual aims are to record the events of that time to ensure they are not forgotten, and to bring the perpetrators of great crimes to justice. The Center presently contains the world's largest archive on the Khmer Rouge, holding over 1 million pages of documents and 6,000 photographs.

Research undertaken by DC-Cam’s staff and volunteers has resulted in the publication of many books, including history textbooks and teacher-training materials for local use. But what about English-language books for the international general reader? DC-Cam’s director, Youk Chhang, recommends Bou Meng: a survivor from Khmer Rouge Prison S-21, by Huy Vannak, which is published by DC-Cam itself, and The Last One: an orphaned child fights to survive the killing fields of Cambodia by Marin R. Yann, published by Outskirts Press, and available from their website, http://www.outskirtspress.com.

If you happen to be in Phnom Penh you can buy Bou Meng direct from Bou Meng himself, at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, formerly the notorious Prison S-21 of the book’s subtitle.

Bou Meng is a harrowing read.  At least 16,000 people were imprisoned and tortured at S-21, of those sent there, only 14 people survived. Bou Meng was one of the 14; his life was spared because he was an artist, and the regime needed him to paint portraits of the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot. Bou Meng, who in chapter 2 talks directly to the reader through Huy Vannak’s translation, is unsparing in his description of deprivation and torture, both mental and physical. This is typical:  The interrogator kept asking me the same questions. I replied with the same answers. The interrogator grasped a bunch of torture materials, including bamboo sticks, whips, rattans, cart axles and twisted electrical wires.  He asked me to choose one of them. I did not want any of them because they were tools to hurt me. But I did not have any choice.

Bou Meng’s wife, Ma Yoeun, was killed at S-21, and their children also perished under the tyranny of the Khmer Rouge. Comrade Duch was the Khmer Rouge official in charge of S-21. In 2009, a UN supervised trial of Duch began at a Phnom Penh court; in 2010, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity, torture, and murder. Huy Vannak reports that Bou Meng now wants to hold a Buddhist ceremony: “to dedicate justice to the soul of his wife and the victims of the Khmer Rouge. Then, he believes, their spirits will rest in a peaceful place.” 

Today, Bou Meng paints pictures drawing on his memories of life under the Khmer Rouge. Huy Vannak says: “He draws on his personal memories to paint a collective pain. He hopes his art will inspire the world to prevent a repeat of Cambodia’s painful past.”

In addition to books, Youk Chhang also recommends the movie  A River Changes Course, directed by Kalyanee Mam, which follows three families in contemporary rural Cambodia as they struggle for survival, their livelihoods threatened by ever-increasing industrial development:  http://ariverchangescourse.com/

For further information, or to order DC-Cam’s publications, visit http://www.dccam.org/

Revenge / Yoko Ogawa

Revenge, by Yoko Ogawa, translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder, is a mesmerising, weird, and elusive meditation on...what, precisely? Coming up with possible answers to that question is one of the many engrossing challenges of reading Revenge, a collection of eleven short stories, each bound to others by cobwebby chains of connection, and each giving glimpses of the world seen through a most dark-adapted eye.

What few of the stories seem to be about, or at least not obviously, is revenge. Granted, some seem to concern marital, or romantic, revenge: in Old Mrs. J a woman apparently kills in revenge for being trapped in a disappointing marriage; in Lab Coats another woman kills because her married lover prevaricates about ditching his wife; in Sewing for the Heart a bag maker kills because, as he sees it, a customer rejects the bag he has crafted for her, to hold her heart, which lies outside her chest, and hence she also rejects him. But some of the stories seem to have little or nothing to do with revenge.  Afternoon at the Bakery, the horrifying first story in which a mother fails to assimilate the unassimilable fact that her child has died in an abandoned refrigerator, seems to be about the way lives can be smashed by improbable, but devastating events; the final story, Poison Plants, which wheels back to Afternoon at the Bakery through the "motif", if that is what it is, of a dead child in an abandoned refrigerator being found by an old woman, seems to be about the loss and degradation of ageing, and the pity of mortality.

Indeed, the whole book drips with the menace of mortality; in every story there's a death, or deaths, although not every story has a death as its central event.  Still, Poison Plants and hence Revenge, closes on, and thereby emphasises, the idea of mortality, with this account from the narrator, an old woman, of finding the aforementioned dead child in a refrigerator: I opened the doors - and I found someone inside. Legs neatly folded, head buried between the knees, curled ingeniously to fit between the shelves and the egg box. "Excuse me," I said, but my voice seemed to disappear into the dark. It was my body. In this gloomy, cramped box, I had eaten poison plants and died, hidden away from prying eyes. Crouching down at the door, I wept.  For my dead self.

It's not obvious, to me, how to interpret this passage, but whatever it means, and whatever its relation to Afternoon at the Bakery, it gives the flavour of Ogawa's style - at least as it reads through the veil of translation. Peering through that veil, it does seem that Ogawa writes of horror, cruelty, desperation, lives gone awry, in short, exact, even forensic sentences, generally unadorned. The effect is often hypnotically, but precisely, threatening.  This, from Welcome to the Museum of Torture, is Ogawa on a dead hamster lying between a crumpled hamburger wrapper and a crushed paper cup in a garbage can at a fast-food place: Its fur was speckled brown, and its tiny arms and legs were a beautiful shade of pale pink. The poor thing almost still looked alive. I even imagined I saw its little paws twitching. Its black eyes seemed to be looking at me. I opened the lid the rest of the way, releasing the smell of ketchup and pickles and coffee all mixed together. I was right, the hamster was moving: hundreds of maggots were worming into its soft belly.

All in all, Revenge is a mysteriously wonderful book, as beautiful as the mould of decomposition soon to be spreading across that hamster.  I urge you to read it - and then at once to re-read it, to retrace the many delicate threads that link Ogawa's stories and to re-evaluate what you think she might be saying.

The US edition is published by Picador, and it might be available in parts of Asia, but I read the UK edition published by Harvill Secker, http://www.vintage-books.co.uk.

500 Words From Dawn Farnham

500 Words From is a series of guest posts from authors.   Here, Dawn Farnham talks about The Straits Quartet, her acclaimed series of novels set in nineteenth-century Singapore and Batavia (Jakarta). The four titles together follow the eventful love affair between Charlotte, sister of Singapore’s Head of Police, and Zhen, once the lowliest of Chinese coolies, and a triad member.  In each book, Dawn skilfully weaves romance, scandal, and sex into a satisfying novel, without sacrificing historical accuracy; she includes all sorts of arresting period detail such as what to do in a tiger attack, and how, in the 1830s, passionate girls avoided pregnancy.

Dawn was born in England, but grew up in Perth, Australia, and her links to Asia are strong. She has lived in China, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan.   She now splits her time between Perth, and her second home, Singapore.  It was in Singapore that she began to write, fascinated by the rich history of the tiny City-State, where a variety of cultures mingle, and where, in the nineteenth century the Peranakans, descendants of male Chinese immigrants and their Malay brides, formed a large and influential population.

So, 500 words from Dawn Farnham:

"What inspired you to write this book?" Ask any author that question and the responses will be as varied as the books themselves.  For myself, it was a photograph.  I had recently become a docent, guiding the old Peranakan Museum in Singapore and learning the surprising details of Peranakan homes, food, marriage and lifestyle. A door opened onto an entirely unheard-of universe and I was taken by this hybrid Malay / Chinese culture.

The photograph was half life-sized. It showed a wedding. The bride was dressed in the old costume of China and the groom like a Mandarin with his gown and button hat.  A simple wedding photograph, you might think, albeit exotic, but it spoke to me. For the girl was Peranakan and ought to be in a sarong and jacket, and he was most likely a coolie, newly arrived from China’s shores.  

She was a daughter, a more precious commodity in Singapore than in China, for through her were cemented important trading connections to other Peranakan families all over Southeast Asia. But in a smallish community there were never enough men to marry each daughter to a Peranakan male. So she was the means, too, to bring into the family new blood, Chinese speakers, young men who understood China and its ways better than the Peranakans themselves. And a vast supply was arriving with every boat from China. It sufficed only to pick the best of the bunch, ones who could read and write and had canny heads on their shoulders.

The huge difference from China was that this young man would move into the home of the bride not vice versa. It was up to him to adjust to this new world: different language, different food, different customs.

So there it was, the story of a young man, Zhen, handsome and ambitious, out to make his fortune and to land a rich bride. But that was not story enough of course. It had to be harder. He had to be in love not with the rich bride but with the most forbidden fruit of the colony of Singapore, a white woman, Charlotte, sister of the police chief; he had to face the seemingly impossible task of coming together with her.

That was the little seed, and all writers know that the seed is everything. From that seed, I discovered the life and loves of Singapore’s first architect George Coleman and his mixed-race Javanese / Dutch / Armenian mistress, Takouhi. I read about the house he built for her and their child, and I was hooked.

I hadn’t intended to write a quartet. Somehow that grew along the way when halfway through the first book, The Red Thread, I realised I had more to say and that the natural ending of that book led to another – The Shallow Seas. Once I realised I was going to write two, the next step, surprisingly, was not three but four, hence The Hills of Singapore and The English Concubine.

Hitchcock famously said “a movie is life with all the boring bits taken out”. Something like a quartet of books has to be similar. I’m asking the reader to invest time in my characters and my duty is to make them and the events of their lives as lively and dramatic and romantic and passionate as I can. Have I succeeded?  Only readers can say.

The Straits Quartet is published by Monsoon Books:  http://www.monsoonbooks.com.sg/

Visit Dawn’s website: http://www.dawnfarnham.com/

Nita B Kibble Literary Awards

Australia's Nita B Kibble Literary Awards aim to encourage women writers to advance the cause of literature. The Awards recognise women producing “life writing”. This includes novels, autobiographies, biographies, and any other writing with a strong personal element. Two awards are made each year, the Kibble Literary Award and the Dobbie Literary Award.  The Kibble Literary Award, currently valued at A$30,000, recognises the work of an established Australian woman writer. The Dobbie Literary Award, currently valued at A$5,000, recognises a first published work from an Australian woman writer. The winners of this year’s Kibble and Dobbie Literary Awards have just been announced in Sydney. 

The Kibble went to Annah Faulkner, for The Beloved, a novel set largely in a country usually ignored in literature: Papua New Guinea. This was where Faulkner grew up. The Beloved concerns intergenerational conflict between a mother and her daughter. When Roberta "Bertie" Lightfoot is struck down with polio she sets her heart on becoming an artist. Through drawing, she gives form and voice to the reality of the people and the world around her. While her father is happy to indulge her driving passion, her mother will not let art get in the way of the very different future she wishes for her only daughter.

In 1955 the family moves to Port Moresby, Here, in post-colonial Papua New Guinea, Bertie thrives amid the lush colours and the tropical abundance. She rebels against her mother's strict control, and secretly learns the techniques of drawing and painting from her mother's arch rival. But she is not the only one deceiving her family. As secrets come to light, the domestic varnish starts to crack, and jealousy and passion threaten to forever mar the relationship between Bertie and her mother.

Meanwhile, the Dobbie went to Lily Chan for Toyo: A Memoir, in which the author turns her artistic vision onto her own family's history, to provide an interpretation of her grandmother's extraordinary biography. Toyo is set in Japan before and after war, and also in Australia. Chan is well placed to write about both societies: she was born in Kyoto, and raised in Narrogin, in Western Australia; she now lives in Melbourne.

Toyo, Chan’s grandmother, was born into the traditional world of pre-war Osaka, Her father lived in China with his wife. Her unmarried mother, her father’s mistress, ran a café. As she grew up Toyo understood she must protect the secret of her parents’ true relationship, and thus keep herself and her mother in society’s good graces.

Toyo's life in Osaka was thrown into turmoil by World War Two. Through experiencing the changes of the time, through finding love, and through suffering painful loss, she grew into herself and became more aware of where she had come from. Through it all she clung to her parents’ secret.

The Beloved is published by Pan Macmillan. For more information see http://www.panmacmillan.com.au/ .  Toyo is published by Black Inc. For more information see http://www.blackincbooks.com/

500 Words from D. Devika Bai

500 Words From is a series of guest posts from writers, in which they talk about their latest books.

Here, Malaysian author D. Devika Bai talks about her novel, The Flight of the Swans, which is set in British India and colonial Malaya, and concerns the Bhonsle family. Cursed, and with blood on his hands, Captain Ramdas Rao Bhonsle is forced to flee Killa Fort, which has fallen to the British. A strange flight of swans signals this flight - one that will drive Ramdas and his family into deepest adversity. But  adversity spawns dreams: Ramdas dreams of ousting the British from India; his sons, the handsome and irascible Nilkanth and the plain and romantic Madhav both dream of Tara Bai, the most beautiful courtesan in the land; Ramdas’ granddaughter, Arundhati, who is blind, dreams of seeing. A lone white swan is inextricably linked to the ebb and flow of the Bhonsles’ fortunes as they flee across India to Malaya - a journey once taken by Devika's own ancestors. 

Devika's fellow Malaysian, Rani Manicka, who won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize  for her novel The Rice Mother  is amongst her  fans, and has praised  her as having  “a wonderful eye for detail.”

So, 500 words from D.Devika Bai:


The Flight of the Swans, my debut novel, came about as a transition from writing newspaper articles to novel-writing.

After eight years of contributing articles to the New Straits Times, I felt it was time to move on to writing something more challenging like a novel. Moreover, there’s no under-estimating the power of a tiny spark struck in you during your teen years. When my family physician, the late Dr. Lakshmanya, heard I had scored an A1 in English Language  - it was rare in 1963 Malaya for Cambridge University to award excellent grades for English -  he said at once: “You should become a novelist”. I was fifteen then. That spark he ignited burst into flame during middle-age and my debut novel was born.

First and foremost, The Flight of the Swans is a family saga about three generations of the Bhonsle family battered by war, famine, family conflict and social injustice. Why choose to write about a family? Because the family-oriented stories I read during my teen years influenced me greatly: The Grapes of Wrath  (John Steinbeck), The Good Earth (Pearl S Buck), Little Women (Luisa May Alcott) and Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell). It gave me great pleasure writing about the love, loyalty and courage of the Bhonsles in The Flight of the Swans. Not only that, I had written about the great migration East, from British India to Malaya, in this instance, a topic rarely touched upon.

A good deal of research went into the novel and it was with a sense of pride that I wrote about my clansmen, the Marathas, who under the reign of King Shivaji Rao Bhonsle ruled almost the whole of India. And it was with the same pride, too, that I wrote about my adopted country Malaya (now Malaysia) where my great-grandfather migrated to work in the Federated Malay States Railway.

History buffs will love this book. It brings to life war-torn India as the British battle brave Maratha natives and sheds light on the lustful lives of the rich and not-so-famous. It also spotlights the journey to the East. This journey is based on that of my great-grandfather from India to Penang Island in Malaya. And with his arrival an invisible curtain parts to reveal the cultural melting-pot of 19^th century Penang in all its glorious detail.

Romantics will moon over the forbidden love between an ordinary man and the most beautiful courtesan in the land. Feminists will thrill at the sheer guts of a Maratha queen, based on a true historical figure, and her female sepoys as they fight the British to the death. All right-thinking people will root for the courtesan-by-birth who defies norms and breaks the shackles of a forced life of sex and opulence. And who wouldn’t empathise with the agony of parents who bear a wayward son and a blind daughter?

In a nutshell, The Flight of the Swans illuminates loyalty to king and country, courage and family bonding and sacrifice in a rich blend of historical facts and delicious fiction.

The Flight of the Swans is published by Monsoon Books in both paperback and as an Ebook see http://www.monsoonbooks.com.sg/. 

For more information visit: www.facebook.com/TheFlightOfTheSwans