Americans flying the flag
It’s good - and appropriate - that we are now seeing entries coming in from American writers.
Why appropriate? Well, although there is much debate about who was responsible for the birth of the modern short story, perhaps the strongest claim comes from the US in the 1800s.
There had been short stories before - the tradition of oral storytelling is based upon the idea, just read some Geoffrey Chaucer to confirm that - but it was not until the 19th Century that it really started to establish itself as a written force to be reckoned with.
And probably the person who initially did most to achieve that was Nathaniel Hawthorne, of Salem, Massachusetts, whose book Twice-Told Tales was published in America in 1837. Many see it as the beginning of the modern short story.
Whoever can take the credit, it is certainly true that some of the writers who have taken the genre and made it their own have been Americans, the celebrated Edgar Allan Poe and Scott Fitzgerald among them.
That is not to say that the Americans dominated the scene, quite the opposite in fact, and many other countries can claim their own, including France where Somerset Maughan was born of British parents, Russia with Anton Chekov, Germany with Franz Kafka, India with Rudyard Kipling, and my own favourite, Hector Hugh Munro, better known as Saki, who although a British writer was born in Akyab, in Myanmar, also known as Burma, I believe.
I know I will have missed out great short story writers from other continents and other countries but space permits me mentioning more than a few. By all means, email and make the case for a writer from your country and we’ll give them a mention.
Anyway, with such a fabulous writing tradition, it has been worrying to see the short story being threatened with slow death because not many people are publishing them, which is why I would argue that competitions are so important in helping to keep the short story flag flying.
And it is certainly flying here. Reading the comments from Fiona Cooper on our first winners (and there were plenty other stories that impressed her as well), it is clear that the tradition is in safe hands with a new generation of writers.
We will be putting the winning stories up in a day or two so you can see some of their work.
John Dean