The 2019 awards ceremony for the Islands Short Fiction Contest opened to a full-house April 27 at the Nanaimo Harbourfront branch of the Vancouver Island Regional Library.
The crowd was there to meet the winning authors and hear some of the 127 entries in this year’s literary showcase, co-sponsored by the Nanaimo Arts Council, Vancouver Island Regional Library, and Vancouver Island University’s Department of Creative Writing and Journalism. In the running were: Adult writers (19 and over), Youth (13 to 18), and Junior (12 and under).
Victoria’s Katy Weicker took First Prize in the adult category for her story Tender Embers, which judge Stephen Guppy described as an ‘anti-heroine’, ‘anti-romance’ take on the morning after an on-line dating, one-night stand. “The author has taken the formula of romance and turned it on its head,” he said. “The use of social media for involving the narrator with an offstage character functions as a foil which is particularly effective.”
Weicker, joining the audience via digital video link, watched as her story was read by Nanaimo actress Nicole Potvin. The story begins with the narrator in bed nursing a blinding hangover, and gets more complicated from there, as she tries to disentangle herself from the jaded romantic recollections of the night before.
The morning light is an aggressive slash of orange, Potvin read. It burns with a brightness that makes me squint my already closed eyes even tighter to try and block it… My breath is hot. It reverberates off the underbelly of the comforter and onto my face in moist waves of sick. My stomach contents slip up into the back of my throat. I swallow the burning chunks and cough, they surge again. I toss the blanket, roll across the mattress towards the edge of the bed, and stare at the dingy, beige carpet, waiting for a tsunami of vomit to decimate the unfamiliar loafers haphazardly discarded below me…
Thoughts and emotions get more jumbled from there, as the narrator and her best friend text each other with brief snippets of chat, accentuated with suggestive emojis, all exchanged as a ‘jackhammer’ dawn unfolds.
Nine prizes were awarded, three in each of the categories. Jonathan Sean Lyster took second prize in the Adult category for his story, Target Market; Dawn Stopher took third for Identities Reclaimed. In the Youth category, judged by VIRL’s Lee Losell: Charlotte Taylor took first for Calm Before the Storm; Yinan Cao, second; and Jocelyn Diemer third. In the Junior Category, judged by VIRL’s Nathan McKay: Thunya Dudley took first prize; Esemé Iverson, second; Carolynn Warden, third.
A selection of this year’s stories will be posted at the Islands Short Fiction Contest web site, along with stories from previous years.
