The winner for this year's Commonwealth Short Story Competition is Jennifer Moore.
No offence but I don't get why she won, her story is SOOOO short.
Well, it is a SHORT story competition but its like PENDEK!!!
Meh. I'm thinking of entering next year, most definately won't win anything.
If you're interested, check out their website.
[CLICK]
Edit: OMG!! They have highly recommended short story entries and one of them is from Malaysia! -ProudMamaSmile-
Soraya Sunitra Kee Xiang Yin
Country of citizenship: Malaysia
Story: Light After Death
I don't think we can read her story though...
Here's the overall winning story.
‘Table Talk’ by Jennifer Moore
Mum keeps bringing dead people back for dinner.
At first it was just the odd lost soul she’d met at the bus stop. There was a nice chap called Ian who was killed in an armed robbery at a petrol station and could reel off the names and birthdays of every Tottenham Hotspurs player since 1960. I liked him. He showed me the holes in his head while Mum was making coffee and I filled him in on the latest series of The West Wing.
After Ian came a teacher from Brighton. I can’t even remember her name now. We didn’t hit it off. Then there were those mad old women with matching purple hair. Sisters – lived their whole life together in the same house and died within hours of each other. Imagine that. Mum hoped they’d have some interesting stories about the war but all they could talk about was their dog and how empty their lives were without him. We didn’t bother with coffee and mints that night.
She’s been a bit more discerning of late. Old ladies are out, professionals are in. We’ve had a surprisingly long run of theatre critics, a writer, a retired dentist – even a television presenter one night last week.
He looked vaguely familiar but Mum says I’m probably too young to remember that far back. I think she had high hopes for him, as if a lifetime in the public eye might have given him a more user-friendly insight into death. I’m not sure it works like that. He kept dragging the conversation back to viewing figures and the eventual downfall
of Oprah. I’m not sure he’d even noticed he wasn’t on TV any more – he talked through the whole meal like he was reading his script from an autocue two inches above our heads.
“So then, death,” Mum always says, somewhere between the soup course and desert.
“Any advice for someone thinking of joining the ranks?” She makes terminal cancer sound like a lifestyle choice. “Anything you’d do differently if you had your time again?”
“Bullet-proof hat,” Ian said. That one made us chuckle. “No, seriously, I guess my advice would be stay calm. Don’t sweat it. It’ll all be over before you know it.”
“I see,” Mum said. That’s what she always says.
“But it’s not as bad as everyone makes out? Being dead must have its good points too?” Same questions every time. She says it’s all in the interests of consistency but I think she’s just waiting for an answer she can live with.
No offence but I don't get why she won, her story is SOOOO short.
Well, it is a SHORT story competition but its like PENDEK!!!
Meh. I'm thinking of entering next year, most definately won't win anything.
If you're interested, check out their website.
[CLICK]
Edit: OMG!! They have highly recommended short story entries and one of them is from Malaysia! -ProudMamaSmile-
Soraya Sunitra Kee Xiang Yin
Country of citizenship: Malaysia
Story: Light After Death
I don't think we can read her story though...
Here's the overall winning story.
‘Table Talk’ by Jennifer Moore
Mum keeps bringing dead people back for dinner.
At first it was just the odd lost soul she’d met at the bus stop. There was a nice chap called Ian who was killed in an armed robbery at a petrol station and could reel off the names and birthdays of every Tottenham Hotspurs player since 1960. I liked him. He showed me the holes in his head while Mum was making coffee and I filled him in on the latest series of The West Wing.
After Ian came a teacher from Brighton. I can’t even remember her name now. We didn’t hit it off. Then there were those mad old women with matching purple hair. Sisters – lived their whole life together in the same house and died within hours of each other. Imagine that. Mum hoped they’d have some interesting stories about the war but all they could talk about was their dog and how empty their lives were without him. We didn’t bother with coffee and mints that night.
She’s been a bit more discerning of late. Old ladies are out, professionals are in. We’ve had a surprisingly long run of theatre critics, a writer, a retired dentist – even a television presenter one night last week.
He looked vaguely familiar but Mum says I’m probably too young to remember that far back. I think she had high hopes for him, as if a lifetime in the public eye might have given him a more user-friendly insight into death. I’m not sure it works like that. He kept dragging the conversation back to viewing figures and the eventual downfall
of Oprah. I’m not sure he’d even noticed he wasn’t on TV any more – he talked through the whole meal like he was reading his script from an autocue two inches above our heads.
“So then, death,” Mum always says, somewhere between the soup course and desert.
“Any advice for someone thinking of joining the ranks?” She makes terminal cancer sound like a lifestyle choice. “Anything you’d do differently if you had your time again?”
“Bullet-proof hat,” Ian said. That one made us chuckle. “No, seriously, I guess my advice would be stay calm. Don’t sweat it. It’ll all be over before you know it.”
“I see,” Mum said. That’s what she always says.
“But it’s not as bad as everyone makes out? Being dead must have its good points too?” Same questions every time. She says it’s all in the interests of consistency but I think she’s just waiting for an answer she can live with.
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