(no subject)
I know I'm going to alienate people by posting this, but the Aurealis Awards for the Young Adults category, in relation to at least the short story category, are going to be totally lacking in credibility & meaningfulness this year.
No offence to any finalist in the category, but this year's shortlist for the short story category is a total farce.
There are 20 stories norminated/entered, 10 of which are in Margo Lanagan's anthology, Red Spikes. You don't need to have years of statistical training to work out that, if all the stories are very good (as I'm assuming they are), Margo will of course have a very strong chance of winning the Award, on the sheer balance of probabilities. (Of course, if any of the judges read this post, it's possible they could deliberately not give it to her, to avoid looking as if they awarded the Award to the author best represented on the ballot.)
I've only read one of the short stories, the one in issue 25 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (regarding which I declare an interest, as I'm an ASIM collective member), but you don't need to have read the stories or prefer any of them to see that the lack of nominations is a ludicrous situation. It's particularly ludicrous given that a large proportion of 'young adult' readers, particularly in relation to sf & fantasy, read pretty much the same things 'adult' readers do - you can see it in public libraries, in autograph queues, & in bookshops.
Now, I know 2 of the YA judges this year, & they're lovely & capable people, but I don't think they've done a very good job of identifying a broader range of Australian short stories published this year for YA readers. But this isn't their fault -- it's a meaningless category.
How do you define short stories (&, to be honest, novels) for YAs? Is it purely determined by the decisions of marketing departments of publishers? Anyone who thinks publishers' judgements are more objectively correct than readers' judgements should muse over the Harry Potter books, in their 'young adult' and (boring & more expensive) 'adult' covers, for a while. Or the various editions of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected.
Or should YA short stories be those read by young adult readers? If so, why are the nominators (as far as I know) & the judges adults, & not even school/children's librarians? Should it be purely determined by what the nominators (who may well have a vested interest in the result) consider to be YA, which may well be rather patronising (e.g., the only ASIM short story nominated -- quite probably by one of the ASIM collective -- is 1.5 pages long & is an amusing little fractured fairy tale. Not-so-typical YA reading, nor typical of what's published in ASIM.)
Reflecting this complexity, there is no definition of YA literature in the AA guidelines or anywhere else on their website, no guidance about what makes a work 'eligible' for the YA division of the Awards. I don't know if this is because YA literature is just too hard to define, or is considered (oddly) to be self-evident, or simply because no-one ever got round to developing such definitions/guidance. It'd be interesting to know which.
Yes, the other divisions/categories (SF, fantasy, horror, children) are also not defined (with the exception of children, which is defined as that read by 8-12 year olds, which isn't much of a definition), but there's more clarity about what sort of work falls into each category. Yes, some short stories end up nominated for fantasy & horror, or fantasy & sf, but there are stories that are nominated for only one of these categories. These categories are more valid, & eligibility judgements therefore more reliable (consistently utilised across individuals & time).
I suggest this lack of clarity about what is YA literature has resulted in nominators & judges being hesitant to nominate short stories, to make a judgment about whether a story is YA literature. I think in ASIM it's left up to the discretion of individual issue editors & authors to nominate 'eligible' stories. Such uncertainty & hesitancy is in some ways quite appropriate, given the problematic nature of the category. But it may well mean that more challenging or perhaps controversial works don't get nominated in the category. Who can say how representative the shortlisted stories are? Do they underrepresent the amount of horror read by YAs, overrepresent the amount of fantasy or sf? Who knows....
The lack of clarity of the YA category, the lack of nominations for the YA SS category, & the questionable representativeness of the nominated stories in terms of YA reading patterns, challenge the credibility of the stories that end up in the shortlist, & inevitably the final Award made. No matter how good they are (& I'm honestly sure the 2006 finalists are good, given the judges), there will always be questions about what stories were not considered, what was missed. If Margo wins people may well believe or suggest she didn't deserve it, but won because she was better represented on the final shortlist than anyone else. It may damage her reputation, or that of the people &/or publishers who may have nominated her. If she doesn't win the judges could be suspected of being unfair to her to avoid seeming biased or superficial.
So what to do about this? We could all just label this year's YA SS shortlist as meaningless, which was my starting point in this rant (sorry). Or we could abolish the YA category entirely, at least in relation to SSs. I don't think it can be fixed - I think it wasn't well built in the first place.
No offence to any finalist in the category, but this year's shortlist for the short story category is a total farce.
There are 20 stories norminated/entered, 10 of which are in Margo Lanagan's anthology, Red Spikes. You don't need to have years of statistical training to work out that, if all the stories are very good (as I'm assuming they are), Margo will of course have a very strong chance of winning the Award, on the sheer balance of probabilities. (Of course, if any of the judges read this post, it's possible they could deliberately not give it to her, to avoid looking as if they awarded the Award to the author best represented on the ballot.)
I've only read one of the short stories, the one in issue 25 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (regarding which I declare an interest, as I'm an ASIM collective member), but you don't need to have read the stories or prefer any of them to see that the lack of nominations is a ludicrous situation. It's particularly ludicrous given that a large proportion of 'young adult' readers, particularly in relation to sf & fantasy, read pretty much the same things 'adult' readers do - you can see it in public libraries, in autograph queues, & in bookshops.
Now, I know 2 of the YA judges this year, & they're lovely & capable people, but I don't think they've done a very good job of identifying a broader range of Australian short stories published this year for YA readers. But this isn't their fault -- it's a meaningless category.
How do you define short stories (&, to be honest, novels) for YAs? Is it purely determined by the decisions of marketing departments of publishers? Anyone who thinks publishers' judgements are more objectively correct than readers' judgements should muse over the Harry Potter books, in their 'young adult' and (boring & more expensive) 'adult' covers, for a while. Or the various editions of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected.
Or should YA short stories be those read by young adult readers? If so, why are the nominators (as far as I know) & the judges adults, & not even school/children's librarians? Should it be purely determined by what the nominators (who may well have a vested interest in the result) consider to be YA, which may well be rather patronising (e.g., the only ASIM short story nominated -- quite probably by one of the ASIM collective -- is 1.5 pages long & is an amusing little fractured fairy tale. Not-so-typical YA reading, nor typical of what's published in ASIM.)
Reflecting this complexity, there is no definition of YA literature in the AA guidelines or anywhere else on their website, no guidance about what makes a work 'eligible' for the YA division of the Awards. I don't know if this is because YA literature is just too hard to define, or is considered (oddly) to be self-evident, or simply because no-one ever got round to developing such definitions/guidance. It'd be interesting to know which.
Yes, the other divisions/categories (SF, fantasy, horror, children) are also not defined (with the exception of children, which is defined as that read by 8-12 year olds, which isn't much of a definition), but there's more clarity about what sort of work falls into each category. Yes, some short stories end up nominated for fantasy & horror, or fantasy & sf, but there are stories that are nominated for only one of these categories. These categories are more valid, & eligibility judgements therefore more reliable (consistently utilised across individuals & time).
I suggest this lack of clarity about what is YA literature has resulted in nominators & judges being hesitant to nominate short stories, to make a judgment about whether a story is YA literature. I think in ASIM it's left up to the discretion of individual issue editors & authors to nominate 'eligible' stories. Such uncertainty & hesitancy is in some ways quite appropriate, given the problematic nature of the category. But it may well mean that more challenging or perhaps controversial works don't get nominated in the category. Who can say how representative the shortlisted stories are? Do they underrepresent the amount of horror read by YAs, overrepresent the amount of fantasy or sf? Who knows....
The lack of clarity of the YA category, the lack of nominations for the YA SS category, & the questionable representativeness of the nominated stories in terms of YA reading patterns, challenge the credibility of the stories that end up in the shortlist, & inevitably the final Award made. No matter how good they are (& I'm honestly sure the 2006 finalists are good, given the judges), there will always be questions about what stories were not considered, what was missed. If Margo wins people may well believe or suggest she didn't deserve it, but won because she was better represented on the final shortlist than anyone else. It may damage her reputation, or that of the people &/or publishers who may have nominated her. If she doesn't win the judges could be suspected of being unfair to her to avoid seeming biased or superficial.
So what to do about this? We could all just label this year's YA SS shortlist as meaningless, which was my starting point in this rant (sorry). Or we could abolish the YA category entirely, at least in relation to SSs. I don't think it can be fixed - I think it wasn't well built in the first place.