Winners announced!
The National Arts Festival and Mercury Publishers have announced the winners of Short Sharp Stories, an anthology of crime stories entitled Bloody Satisfied.
They were selected from more than 200 entries and are Dawn Garisch (best story), Roger Smith (best thriller), T. O. Molefe (most original), Liam Kruger (best new voice).
This inaugural anthology, introduced with a foreword by renowned crime fiction writer Deon Meyer, is a collection of thrilling twist-in-the-tale stories that make good on the ‘Bloody Satisfied’ promise: slick and sexy stories that brim with danger and elements of the sinister; sophisticated stories that focus on the subtler crimes of everyday life; smart stories that invert expectations and linger in the mind.
Meyer says: “This book is immensely entertaining and it’s a pleasure to be associated with it. It contains the best 24 out of an astounding more than 200 contributions. It includes world-class internationally famous authors, and a very large number who will soon fall into that category.”
Award money totalling R35 000 will be presented to the four prize-winning stories at the official launch of the anthology at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown on 6 July 2013.
This year’s judges are Sarah Lotz, Fred Khumalo and John Maytham. The editor is Joanne Hichens and the publisher Tim Richman of Mercury (an imprint of Burnet Media).
The Short Sharp Stories Award is a platform for both established and emerging writers in South Africa. The theme for next year’s anthology will be announced at the launch in July. The Award is curated by Joanne Hichens at www.shortsharpstories.com
The book is published by Burnet Media. For more information, please see www.shortsharpstories.com or contact Stuart Hendricks of Mercury books: 021 671 3440; stuart@burnetmedia.co.za.
Announcing the “Short Sharp Stories Award”
The National Arts Festival is thrilled to announce the launch of the “Short Sharp Stories Award” for South African short-story fiction. An anthology of selected stories will be published annually and the theme will differ from year to year.
The winning stories, selected from the stories to be published, by a panel of independent judges, will be announced at an annual launch event at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.
It is the aim of this new award to encourage, support, and showcase established and emerging South African writing talent.
The first volume, scheduled for publication in July 2013, will be devoted to crime-thriller fiction. At least twenty stories will be published in what will be an exciting home-grown collection.
We are also thrilled to announce that internationally acclaimed crime-fiction author Deon Meyer will write the foreword to this first anthology.
We can’t wait to read your killer tales glinting sharp as knives. If you are working on something slick, sexy, flirty, dangerous, a twist-in-the-tale story that delivers a measure of justice, well, that’s just up our street. Skop skiet en donder is one way to go about it, but, while we look forward to those nail-biting, thrilling tales with an element of the sinister, we will also welcome clever stories that focus on smaller, more subtle crimes that we commit on a daily basis when we think we can break the law with impunity. We’re hoping too that a number of stories will deliver that measure of justice so sorely needed in South Africa.
The only proviso is that the story must be set in South Africa – from the dusty streets of the Karoo in summer, to the slopes of a rain battered Table Mountain, from Durban’s beaches to the derelict streets of inner Jozi, the diversity of setting is as exciting as the diversity of voice which South Africa has to offer.