Читать книгу Flying High - Литагент HarperCollins USD, Ian St. James Awards - Страница 5

Foreword

The sixteen stories that you are about to read emerged from over three and a half thousand entries for this year’s Ian St James Awards.

There have been several new developments in the last twelve months: the introduction of a shorter category of fiction under five thousand words alongside the established category of up to ten thousand words; for the first time this year, we opened our doors to writers in the English language from outside these shores and this volume contains stories by writers from New Zealand and the United States; the launch of Acclaim, a bimonthly magazine featuring stories by shortlisted writers in these Awards. Acclaim will publish sixty-four stories in six issues and include writers from Namibia and South Africa. All the activities associated with these Awards are co-ordinated at The New Writers’ Club. In the summer, the Club organized its first Short Story Workshop as part of the 9th Birmingham Readers and Writers Festival. There will be more to come.

Every writer who enters the Ian St James Awards – and they have to be over eighteen without a published work of full-length fiction to their name – receives an appraisal of their work. The success of this operation can be measured by the receipt at The New Writers’ Club of only eight letters consigning (a few of) our readers to the darkest depths. Not a bad ratio from such a large entry. The critiques are by no means definitive. In the time and space available, they can’t be, but they are intended to highlight a story’s strengths and weaknesses and are, hopefully, of great value to writers who find feedback so hard to come by. In addition, the Club also now appraises stories by member-writers outside the entry dates for the annual Awards and these more detailed reports are proving to be very popular.

To all the readers who have helped us arrive at this book, many thanks. Similarly, our thanks go to this year’s panel of judges who gave freely of their time to decide on the stories that would be published in these pages. I am sure that the stories that have been selected – and there is as always a real cross-section of styles and subject matter – will entertain.

To all the writers who sent us stories this year and missed out, thank you for entering, good luck with your writing and there’s always next year. This is the fifth Ian St James Awards book to be published in as many years by HarperCollins. Our thanks go to the many people at the publishers who helped with the production of this book and to all our supporters in the book trade. Finally, many congratulations to this year’s sixteen Award-winning writers who are now, without doubt, ‘Flying High’.

Merric Davidson

Director, The New Writers’ Club