Friday short fiction #15: cornucopia
Cornelia Kopp Gathering 2010
An assortment of recent award-winning short fiction from literary publications:
Cate Bailey, 'Concessions' (MSLEXIA #49, APRIL-JUNE 2011)
Winner of the 2011 Mslexia short story competition. Unashamedly about fear and self-loathing in the Australian outback, the sexual content is a bit unexpected not least by the female protagonist, who clearly fell into a sudden pit of desperation - Bailey likes to write about desperate characters. It's hard to believe this is her first published story.
Vanessa Jones, 'Plasticated' (SEGORA, MAY 2010)
Joint winner of Segora's first short story competition, this is a charming park-bench portrait of old folks that turns out a little weirder than expected.
Nikita Nelin, 'Eddie' (SOUTHWORD #19, DECEMBER 2010)
Winner of the 8th Annual Seán Ó Faoláin short story competition, this character study is worth looking at for its structure, built around a clever use of the word 'because', where it becomes a device by which you learn Eddie is one step behind everyone else.
Samuel Wright, 'Breathe' (THE WRITER'S AND ARTIST'S YEARBOOK, MARCH 2011)
Winner of The Writer's and Artist's Yearbook 2011 short story competition. Restrained yet open-hearted, there's something fastidiously Confucian about how the protagonist, a teacher, provides this first-person self-portrait, but the final sentence gives a window onto his real state of mind.
Favourite short story of the week: Theodore Sturgeon, 'When You Care, When You Love' (THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, SEPTEMBER 1962)
Some have been speculating if the 2010 Eva Green/Matt Smith film Womb [ trailer ] is drawn from this classic Sturgeon novelette, about a woman who attempts to genetically resurrect her late husband after he has died from a very rare and aggressive form of cancer. But the film has the woman becoming the mother of her cloned dead partner - Sturgeon's story doesn't venture into such weird psychological terrritory, instead we get a well-grounded family history that gives some credibility to the woman's motives to bring him back. Hopefully the movie will be out on DVD soon, as that looks interesting in itself.