Short stories are often seen as an entry point into serious, longer-form literature. This argument, perhaps, is the influence behind the tradition of short-story competitions. As Anthony Fleischer, president of SA Pen, predicts, “Some names in these volumes will become renowned.” Recently, three collections of stories have seen the light of day in South Africa. Two were based on competitions. All the stories in these collections were previously unpublished.
Oshun’s 180° is a collection of 21 short stories by South African woman writers, with established and budding writers side by side. This should be a confidence booster for rookies. The collection focuses on the observations, realities and struggles of women. In the foreword, Nancy Richards says of women’s writing: “What women write about is what they know. The world as they see it.”
Their stories explore issues of religion, infidelity and gender-based abuse. Reading 180° gave this male reader the feeling of eavesdropping on women’s conversations about themselves. From a galaxy of rising stars, Natalie Boltt, Catriona Ross and Lindiwe Nkutha stand out. Though their stories are short, they are interesting and important.
African Compass: New Writing from Southern Africa 2005 (Spearhead) is based on a competition. The stories were selected by Nobel laureate JM Coetzee and African Compass pits established writers against aspirant ones. Coetzee observes that, of the stories submitted, “some still bore the marks of the school classroom; others were obviously by seasoned hands”.
These stories are by 26 writers from the Southern African region, and the book is the first in the three-year series of the HSBC/SA Pen Literary Award, which carries an overall prize of $10 000. Only the best entries were published. Tebogo Sengfeng, Kirsten Miller, Justin Fox and Maxine Case, among other, feature in this book.
The winning story was Pius, by the architect Elizabeth Pienaar. Her story is an account of the last hours of a murder victim. The story is detailed and beautifully written; its language is, as Coetzee notes, “vivid and poetic”. Darrel Bristow-Bovey’s A Jo’burg Story received a special mention, with Coetzee commending it as a “beautifully crafted dialogue”.
Seventh Street Alchemy: A Selection of Writings from the Caine Prize for African Writing 2004 (Jacana) is the fifth anthology to arise from this competition, which covers all of Africa. In this collection, there are three stories each from East, West, North and Southern Africa. The title is from the winning story by Zimbabwean writer Brian Chikwava, a vivid picture of life in Harare. Not only the short-listed stories are included in the book, stories produced at the Caine Prize’s third workshop for African writers are also included. The quality of writing is relatively high, which makes it a good book to read.
But what happens to the winners of such competitions? Some retreat into obscurity, others rise in the literary world. Helon Habila and Leila Aboulela, who were the first two winners of the Caine Prize, went on to publish novels that won international awards.
The involvement of the business sector in literature development through short-story competitions is noteworthy. Seventh Street Alchemy received financial assistance from the Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. Business Arts South Africa helped fund African Compass.
Some people are of the view that short stories, like poetry, are the fast food of literature, but one cannot doubt their importance. There are some narratives that can be better told in short stories than in novels.