Meet the Judges

Music. In the spirit of reconciliation, I acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community.

I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples today. Welcome to Totally Lit, the podcast celebrating reading, writing and creating literature. I'm your host, Kai Garvey. Thank you for listening. Hello, listeners. I have a very exciting episode for you tonight. I am thrilled to announce the launch of the Totally Lit Microfiction Prize. It opens tomorrow at 9am.

Jump onto kigarvey.com and select the tab that says Totally Lit Microfiction Prize to check out the terms and conditions and all the awesome prizes. The prize will be supporting the Very Wonderful Carers Foundation. $5 from every entry will be donated to support the foundation. The prize is running through the month of October which coincides with National Carers Week which runs from the 13th to the 19th of October.

Some of you may know that I'm the mum and carer to my two wonderful sons who are on the autism spectrum. They are my inspiration and my motivation. Negotiating through the world of medical practitioners, Medicare, Centrelink, the NDIS, timetabling, support workers, medication and just the world in general can be a lot. The reason I do it? Because I love them. Any one of us can become a carer at some stage of our lives.

Carers are people who provide unpaid care and support to family members and friends who have a disability, mental illness, chronic condition, terminal illness, an alcohol or other drug issue, or who are frail aged. If you are a carer and you need help, reach out to Carers Australia to find your local carers organisation or you can find the Carers Foundation using Google. Register with them if you are feeling overwhelmed or need help.

On my journey to becoming a writer and podcaster, I had many kinder people support me with my dream to write.

They provided opportunities to me to attend workshops, retreats and other writing events with delayed payment options or scholarship places and other means of support. When I was a single mum trying to make ends meet, it was tough. Part of the Totally Lit Microfiction Prize is to pass on that opportunity and support an emerging writer out there. Edwina Shaw has very kindly offered a coaching call and scholarship place to her writing retreat to support a carer and emerging writer.

In this episode, judges of the prize, Cheryl Gwither, Lauren Elise Daniels, Geneve Flynn and Pamela Jeffs join me to give me some great tips on how to write a prize-winning short story. They're going to tell you the things they're looking out for when they're judging and listen closely for the code word that you'll need to include in your entry. I hope you enjoy our chat. Welcome to Totally Lit. I'm so excited for this episode.

I've been sitting on this news for a couple of months now that we are launching the Totally Lit Microfiction Prize, an opportunity for all those emerging and established authors out there to submit to the competition. We're going to have some amazing prizes and some opportunities for you to have some coaching sessions with some established authors. We've got Larrikin Hness on board. We've got Kelly M Cox.

What I would like to do tonight is introduce you to the amazing judges that have come on board to judge the Microfiction Prize. They're all very well-established authors in their field and I'm very proud and thrilled that they've agreed to be part of this project. So I'm going to hand over to Genevieve first to introduce herself. Hi Kai, thanks for having me. I'm pretty excited to do this podcast. It's very exciting to be part of this project as well.

I'm Genevieve Flynn. I'm a fiction editor, author and poet. I'm co-editor of Black Crane's Tales of Unquiet Women and collaborator for Tortured Willows, Bent, Bowed and Broken. I've won two Bram Stoker Awards, the Shirley Jackson, the Arialis, and a Brave New Weird Award. And I'm a recipient of the 2022 Queensland Writers Fellowship. My biggest short story win is for my story, They Call Me Mother, which won the Arialis Award for Best Horror Short Story. That's me. Thanks, Denise.

And we've also got Lauren. Yes, hi there. Thanks for having us, Kai, and for including us in this project. It sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun. My name is Lauren Elise Daniels. I write under Ellie Daniels. I'm the 2023 Bram Stoker Award finalist for short fiction for my short story, Silk. I'm also an Aurealis and an Australasian Shadows Award finalist for my anthology work and as a poet. I'm an editor for a few anthologies now, and I have a BA and an MFA in creative writing.

I've been in publishing for over 30 years now and have 140-plus published titles under my belt now as an editor. So I've been at it for a little bit. Thrilled to be here. Thanks, Lauren. Okay, we'll hand over to Pamela. Hi, Kai. Thanks for having me here today. I'm really thrilled to be part of this process. So by way of introduction, I'm an award-winning speculative fiction short story author. I have six short story collections published.

Including the Aurealis Award shortlisted works, The Terralite Collection and Five Dragons. I won the Aurealis Award last year for Best Horror Short Story for my short work called Death Interrupted. And in previous years, I've shortlisted for an additional 11 Aurealis Awards, three Ditmar Awards and two Australasian Shadows Awards. And so that's pretty much me in a nutshell. Thanks, Pamela. And Cheryl, can you introduce yourself?

Hello, Kai. yes, I'm really pleased to be here like the others in this competition and being the judge in this competition. My published work includes two novels, historical adventures usually for middle grade readers, and also nine chapter books for younger readers and many short stories and plays in the school magazine. Probably one of the big great experiences I've loved has been judging the Fellowship of Australian Writers Flash Fiction competition several times in Queensland.

And, you know, it's just a fantastic task for a short story addict like me. I also set up and helped run the 52-week Flash Fiction Challenge. It's been a fantastic Facebook group for writers of flash fiction for adults and kids and these are stories of around 500 word limits and I used to set a new theme word every week.

The most brilliant part, the rewarding part of it for me was ending up with 52 short stories myself and 17 of those stories went on to be published in the highly regarded school magazine. So that's, I don't know if everyone knows about that, but it's a wonderful magazine that people, schools subscribe to and to get your story, short story in there is pretty high kudos.

But 17 of my stories ended up in there and that's purely because I was following the principles of what I believe for flash fiction or for short, short fiction. My writing awards include two Australian Society of Author mentorships and two May Gibbs Children's Literature Trust fellowships and the Squibby International Work of Outstanding Progress Award. So yes, it's been a good 20 years plus of writing in my life. Thank you. Oh, my goodness. I feel like I have so much catching up to do, ladies.

I'll need to add into the terms and conditions. Kai Garvey cannot enter her own riding competition.

What I'd like to do now is just get a piece of advice from each of you on what makes a winning short story. So Jen, do you want to share a tip or what you'd be looking for for a prize-winning short story? Sure. For me, it's usually when an author can stick the ending. The writers spend a lot of time, I think, polishing the beginning of a work and making sure the hook is strong and you've got all of the bits and pieces to get the reader in.

But then sometimes the ending gets a little bit short-changed. So for me, when I read a short story and the author has really done a great job on the ending, that's what I'm going to remember. And so if you can make sure your endings are resonant and memorable, I think that stands you in pretty good stead.

Thanks, Janine. Lauren, what about you? I've judged a few competitions over the years and I tend to have a little recipe in my head of a narrative and character arc I want to see something I want to see that movement of rising action to climax to falling action I want to see conflict and transformation of some sort driving things and I want to see that ending tie back to the opening somehow where there's a connection between the open and the close.

And I think my little trade secret, my secret sauce in my mind is, do I remember it? And that might be hard for writers to do or think about, but it's good to know that that's something judges might do.

If we're looking at X number of stories, we might forget stories that don't have that emotional weight or some kind of bang or some kind of some kind of messaging so i want to look at that title and it's going to bounce around in my head a little bit pamela for me considering like short fiction is so short it really for me it's almost.

Got to have poetic writing like I feel like the people that they're writing a story and read it out loud they can find a sort of a rhythm in the narrative like Lauren and Jen have spoken about the it's got to be a full story in a narrative arc and and sticking the ending those are really really important but when I read a story ones that are kind of yeah sort of poetic as you read them they kind of they're the ones that stick with me because they're kind of

like a bit like a song I know that's a bit esoteric, but that's probably something that, you know, sticks with me. And then the other structural things that are really important for me, right up front in the beginning, I want to have a clear point of view, a clear setting and a clear book established straight away. Because if you start with the action, then you've got the reader straight away. And that's what I'd like to see. Thanks, Pam. And Cheryl?

Yes, I would agree with what everybody's saying. Writing these short, short stories are totally thrilling to do and also thrilling to read when you get a really good one. So for me, I always say that this type of short, short story is a snappy sensory expose of the human condition. And they're usually stories of fragility and strength, stories that ring with shared humanity.

And I think just having these stories that connect with how people are and the human condition is really, you know, the heart of it. It can grab heartstrings or intelligence or funny bones. Truly, and likely what the others have said, truly great flash fiction won't let you go. It lingers in your mind after you finish reading it.

And, you know, when I was judging stories, it's the ones that, you know, wake up in the morning and these stories, particular stories, are just going round in my head and I'm thinking, oh my god. How did that, you know, how did she do that? It was amazing. It just won't get out of my head. So to me, that's usually something that twings something in my head for a winner.

And also, for me, if the story's finale holds a twist or an exquisite aha moment and it surprises both protagonist, and the reader, that to me is the thrill of a chase in finding the perfect short, short story or what I used to call it, flash fiction. So yeah, I would look for those sort of things and yeah, use a small idea for a small story, limit the scenes, keep it simple, like tunnel vision with a diamond at the end.

Thank you so much, ladies. You've all won some amazing awards and prizes, so I'm definitely going to follow your advice with my own short story writing.

I also want to chat about the actual competition in that I'm not setting a theme for the story, but I am wanting a code word to be included in your story. So I'm going to do a little drum roll. I don't know if anyone can actually hear that. And tell all the listeners that the code word is burnout. So that's the word I would like included in your story. $5 of every entry is going to support the Carers Foundation and the competition will be running through October which is National Carers Week.

I'm the parent to two boys with special needs and it's something I'm passionate about to recognise and acknowledge all the unpaid carers in Australia and that can be anyone whether you're caring for your elderly parents or if your partner has an illness. You might have children with a disability. There's so many ways that all of us can end up caring for someone else in our lives. And yeah, I just want to give a shout out to everyone out there. So make sure that burnout is in your story.

And I'm relying on the judges to keep this to themselves because we're recording two weeks before the competition opens. So only the five of us know the secret code word at the moment, but it will all be revealed when you listen to the podcast. So I wanted to thank the ladies for dedicating their time to this project. I was thrilled that you all said yes, and you have faith in me, especially when you're transitioning from emerging to established author.

It's lovely when the people that are going ahead of you are like, yep, let's do this. So thank you very much. And yeah, we look forward to reading all your stories, listeners. We can't wait to see the submissions.

Just in closing, I'd like to thank our sponsors Kelly M Cox from Strong Female Protagonists Larrikin House, The Not Quite Right Podcast Riveted Press, Alison Tate No Nonsense Picture Books, Fremantle Press, Hawkeye Publishing and Edwina Shaw from Relax and Write Retreats. When I started working on the idea for the prize, I wanted to be able to create pathways and opportunities into the publishing industry for writers.

I know winning money is awesome and there are some cash prizes, but I also wanted to create community and connection. Thank you to our sponsors for enabling me to do that. I'd also like to do a little shout out to Kelly at One Awesome Woman for her assistance with pulling this comp together and also to my darling husband, Mike, for being an absolute editing dynamo whose magic always makes my guests and I sound amazing. Thank you.

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