Friday, May 01, 2009

A COUPLE OF ITEMS from issue # 140 OF a series of occasional newsletters from the Victoria University centre of the International Institute of Modern Letters.

For more information about any of the items, please email modernletters@vuw.ac.nz.
You can also read this newsletter online

You’re in time to enter…

… the Commonwealth Short Story Competition. Each year 26 winning and highly commended stories from the different regions of the Commonwealth are recorded on to CDs and broadcast on radio stations across the Commonwealth. The winner receives a prize of £2,000 and there are regional prizes of £500. The deadline for entries is 11 May 2009. Full information on how to enter can be found here.

…the Harper-Wood Studentship for English Poetry and Literature at St John’s College, Cambridge. The purpose of the studentship is to encourage a project of creative writing by making it possible for the holder to engage in relevant, project-related travel and study, and candidates must be graduates of any University of Great Britain, Ireland, the Commonwealth or the United States of America (so the competition could be stiff). The studentship is tenable for one year beginning in October and the deadline for applications is 12 May – more information is here.

… the 50th BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Awards 2009. The winner of the Premier Award will net a cool $10,000, the Novice award (unpublished writers) receives $1,500, and secondary school students entering the Young Writers category win $1,4000 for the student, and their school receives $1,500 and a creative writing workshop with a New Zealand writer. Entries open on 1 May, the deadline is 30 June, and entry criteria are available here.

Writers of already ‘proven merit’ are also in time to apply for the CLL Writers’ Awards, which support non-fiction projects with two research grants of $35,000. This year CLL are also offering two additional awards that will provide funds for research for a fiction or non-fiction project. The deadline is 15 July and full details can be found here.
The world where we are
We continue to be surprised by the lack of interest shown by local media in the award to Patricia Grace of the 2008 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, which is generally agreed to be the most prestigious such award after the Nobel. Patricia Grace led a field of nominees who included Michael Ondaatje, Haruki Murakami, and E L Doctorow. Her readers will be pleased to know that her acceptance lecture, ‘The World Where You Are’, can be found here.

1 comment:

maggie@at-the-bay.com said...

I agree... where is the fanfare... what happened? She is modest, self-affacing,and terrific and worthy of honour.