For those of you who choose what to read next from awards long and shortlists, the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award longlist provides a varied mix of excellent writers.
The judges have narrowed their search for an outstanding story of up to 6,000 words from over 500 entries to a longlist of 16 – six women and ten men – who include Ireland’s Belinda McKeon. In 2012 the Award was won by Ireland’s Kevin Barry with his story ‘Beer Trip to Llandudno’.
This year twelve of the sixteen stories are from from UK-based authors, and they compete against international authors who include the American Claire Vaye Watkins, Philomena Kearney Byrne and Belinda McKeon from Ireland, and Pulitzer Prize winning Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz.
The shortlist will be announced on 24th February, with the winner to be revealed on 22nd March. The winner will receive £30,000 and the five shortlisted will receive £1,000.
Belinda McKeon’s story ‘Eyes On Me, Eyes On You’ is about Annie and Brendan, Irish emigrants living in New York, who are still new enough to be hyper aware of the differences between their new and old homeland. During a lunch with friends, Annie tells a ghost story, which is so successfully received that it compels her to divulge a further, more personal tale. While it enraptures her friends, Brendan is acutely embarrassed. ‘Eyes on Me, Eyes on You’ weaves cultural and personal identity with storytelling.
Born in County Longford and educated at Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and at Columbia University, Belinda McKeon’s debut novel Solace was published in 2011 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was voted Irish Book of the Year at the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards. It was also shortlisted for the James Tait Memorial and Kerry Group Awards. She has written for the Irish Times, the Guardian, the Paris Review and elsewhere. Her plays have been produced at Dublin’s Project Theatre, at PS 122 and 59E59 in New York and she is under commission to the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. She is currently an Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at Barnard College, and her second novel is due for publication in 2014. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband.
Marese O’Sullivan of Writing.ie spoke to Belinda McKeon about her writing – you can read Belinda McKeon: In Person here and Poetic License blogger Kate Dempsey interviewed Belinda when she currated the Poetry Now festival back in 2011. Read her interview here.
Judge and novelist Andrew O’Hagan said of the Sunday Times competition: “The short story used to be the orphan of prose fiction – a bit unloved, a bit uncelebrated. But this year’s entries for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award demonstrate just how the form has grown up to be something spectacular and super-confident. The best and brightest of the new generation, as well as hundreds of world-class established authors, are not only writing short stories but submitting their favourite ones for this competition, and the judge’s work this year was not easy.”
The full longlist is:
• Caroline Adderson – “Erection Man”
• Junot Diaz – “Miss Lora”
• Helen Dunmore – “Spotted Dick”
• Adam Foulds – “Tunnelling”
• Mark Haddon – “The Gun”
• Sarah Hall – “Evie”
• Cynan Jones – “The Dig”
• Philomena Kearney Byrne – “Honda Fifty”
• Toby Litt – “Call it ‘The Bug’ Because I Have No Time to Think of a Better Title”
• Belinda McKeon – “Eyes on Me, Eyes on You”
• Mark McNay – “Ten Years Too Late”
• C D Rose – “Arkady Who Couldn”t See and Artem Who Couldn’t Hear”
• Ali Smith – “The Beholder”
• Graham Swift – “I Live Alone”
• Claire Vaye Watkins – “Rondine al Nido”
• Samuel Wright – “Best Friend”
