> be Britfag > be trawling competitions > See Manchester short story contest - £10,000 prize money > read winners and runners up from last year > experience mounting dread > retrieve mother, from living room, with Lit degree from UoB > confirm: asinine twaddle in derivative sincere / minimalist style ( See alternate reality in which Raymond Carver is named Raymond Tusslewaithe Pankherst ) > Lit was right
Seriously I was fucking shocked. The calibre of the work was dreadful. It's a 10 grand prize!
> inb4 why don't you just win if it's so easy > imagine a cookery competition where the winning places seem to go to: cheese sandwich; toast; an apple. How does one know what to enter?
i know the feels, same goes for poetry for the most part.
Alexander Robinson
since there is no objective way to judge art, as soon as you pass some quality barrier, winning depends on the personal tastes of the jury
it's true for any art contest from art contest on a game forum to the nobel prize in literature
Logan Martin
no shit
Nolan Rogers
Oh god the poetry was even worse! There was one which plainly told a story, in that kind of self insistingly profound spares manner, in which a a woman goes to the beach, sees some sea horses and assumes they're shells, and then brings them home. When she opens her bag they're all rotted - the smell haunts her still, the actual last line!
Austin Ward
what a fucking retard lol
Jaxson Diaz
>the smell haunts her still dead.
Andrew Watson
This quality barrier had not been passed. Were not talking Knausguard v Pynchon or something. Were talking...clearly unambitious and derivative work.
Gabriel Nguyen
at least she wasn't violated on the beach and wasn't haunted by the memories afterwards because rape is bad mmkey
Samuel Price
the quality barrier mainly depends on the quality of the jury itself...
Anthony Harris
haha. The spirit of that sort of stuff was very much present.
Lincoln Nelson
Clearly. In this instance the jury did not apply standards of rigour one would expect in a case of a competition of this stature (or not).
You /lit-izens have restored my faith. Praise be to the chan.
Justin Lewis
Practically all contests fail to recognize and award merit in a fair manner. This of course is mainly because 99% of participants get cucked by lobbies. Most and 'best' of them (the contests) do a reasonable job at hiding said structures but sometimes it just shows. If Kafka didn't die of tuberculosis he would probably have killed himself over this shit
Andrew Cooper
Seeing as contests are a no go, what are some good magazines to submit poetry to? Someone who preferably don't take 6 months to answer.
Don't give up on comps though. Just tone yourself down, a runner up place could be useful in getting you a bit of attention / at least one publishing credit in the anthology.
Aaron Gomez
there are so many here, is there a list of the more 'renowned' ones?
Jayden Rodriguez
If you look at the winners scornfully, try your hand. I did that with the first Freeman's and the latest O'Henry collection (and some of the last Granta too). Then again, River Teeth just rejected an essay of mine, so who knows what a given editor will want.
Jack Thomas
Hey there, I study as UoB :^)
Joseph Green
At*
James Russell
Get off Veeky Forums and go to bed mum.
Easton Cooper
Were you successful in the first instances?
Dylan Harris
Get on the tinychat you pleb of a son.
Asher Taylor
The O'Henry prize is awarded to published work from America and Canada, so that's a bit out of my hands. Freeman's isn't taking submissions yet (it's first issue just came out), and I haven't heard from Granta yet. Apologies for the confusing bit of writing. What I meant to say was that plenty of writing I don't like or think is any good gets published and receives accolades, but all that tells me is that I'm almost there (and then others can deride my work).
William Long
I've won several short story competitions in my third world country by rewriting Pynchon and adding nationalistic stuff and easy metaphors.
Wyatt Baker
Hey my Mum sent me a link to this competition, I really want to do a submission for both the Prose and Poetry, but I live in New Zealand so I don't know whether they're taking overseas submissions. I am a British citizen if that helps though.
Anyone here not in the UK who is gonna submit something?
Andrew Rogers
Does granta even accept submissions this time of year?
Jonathan Wilson
You forget to post it, and it depends on the rules of the competition, it should say very clearly.
Ryder Walker
Oh nevermind, i guess it should be fine if you're a citizen?
Xavier Ward
>This of course is mainly because 99% of participants get cucked by lobbies What do you mean by lobbies?
Cameron Ward
>Freeman's >River teeth >O'Henry What are those?
Easton Cruz
Granta takes submissions between October 1 and March 31, so no. I submitted earlier in the year.
Jayden Rogers
Freeman's is John Freeman's new journal. He was the previous editor of Granta. River Teeth is a journal of literary nonfiction. The O'Henry Prize is awarded yearly to writers. The winners are then anthologized in a collection.
Robert Roberts
i guess nepotism
Christian Clark
why don't you post the story so we can see for ourselves
>because rape is bad mmkey This touches on something very important. It's like film students who go straight to a black & white film about suicide, a depresing subject matter does not automatically elevate a work. Even if your poem is about the holocaust, it needs to say something profound, or at least interesting.
These heavy subject matters are much more likely to get attention regardless of quality, so there's another dimension of temptation to do them right there. An example from comics is Maus, I think it's great because it's a very honest recounting of the memories of the author's father (plus a deconstruction of the comic itself), but I suspect the level of attention it gets is due to the subject matter. There have been sother great comics that never got mainstream attention, for example Violent Cases.
