One of our goals at Queenstown Writers Festival is to engage young readers and nurture young writers. That’s why we have special categories for them in our short story competition for Otago/Southland writers.
We’re excited to announce the shortlisted stories today – remember we can’t announce the names of the writers because the competition is judged blind! Winners and placegetters will be revealed on Friday 6 November.
Primary school category
We asked Jane Bloomfield to judge the youngest writers. Jane is the author of the popular Lily Max junior fiction series and was a speaker at last year’s festival.
There was a great turnout in this section with lots of promising writing. Jane says, “Well done, everyone who entered! Six stories really jumped out due to their originality, imagination, well-realised imagery, great humour (in some cases) and a strong grasp on the craft of writing.”
Those six shortlisted stories are:
GremleworthsRaid of the Lunchboxes
Life on Mars
Café Crisis
The Silence of the Shark
Killer In The Night
High school category
Our judge for years 9 to 13 is Iona Winter, whose work explores the spaces between poetry and prose. At last year’s festival she led a flash fiction workshop that inspired participants to think outside the square.
Iona was impressed with the quality of the entries in this category. “Entrants were creative with the use of tone, pace, narrative structure, and characterisation to shape their stories. The majority of the writing left me wanting more, always a good thing with short fiction!”
The shortlisted stories are:
See How They RunMr and Mrs Mirren
Convex Mirrors
Rush
What They Were Actually Like
