Creative Nonfiction Winner: This Boy by Angela Kenyon, Vancouver Comments from Judge JJ Lee: In a short space, the writer brings us to a time in her youth when her growing interest in boys competes with her regard of her father. The parallel between her feelings for her father and her adoration of a pop star is clear, and what emerges is a surprisingly loving portrait of the parent. The story is simply told. It's rooted in the sense of scene and setting. There is an economy in the action which drives the plot. The meaning of the story is in the events rather than through the manipulation of structure (for example leaping flashbacks) or language (where an arch literary device is employed). Here the writer trusts her story. The conflict is one everyone can identify with, and while there is a surprise near the end, what makes the story captivating is the resolution between the narrator and her father. Sometimes you have to stand aside and let a lovely memory tell its own story. The writer did just that. Bravo. Creative Nonfiction Runner Up: My Heart is a Cedar by Fay Roth, Mayne Island Comments from Judge JJ Lee: In My Heart Is a Cedar, the writer constructs with skill and with a good connection to her own thoughts and feelings a story about loss, grief, and forgiveness. Each inset memory, each subsequent scene, as she moves through the phases of attending to the dead and death's aftermath, all help articulate the building sense of loss and, more importantly, guilt in the narrator. The writer doesn't waste words with elliptical asides or the type of information you can pull from the internet. Her specificity matters here. The movement and measure of grief are set on page with each small section. Until, when the pressure is at its highest, she allows the space for forgiveness. In a small space, she was able to map a vast emotional movement and personal growth. I hope the work was as healing to write as it was to read. Wonderful work. Short Story Winner: Fear No Evil by Cheryl Knopp, Vancouver Comments from Judge Dr. Norma Dunning: Fear No Evil was my favourite story. It had action and confusion and shape shifting, and I fell into right away. It felt like western at first but became more. This writer is an experienced writer and has a subtle way of bringing their characters to the reader. I was mesmerized and truly enjoyed every word. Short Story Runner Up: Triumph by Tyler Finley, Kelowna Comments from Judge Dr. Norma Dunning: What gorgeous writing and somehow it made me think of Forrest Gump or the movie Big Fish where all these fantastical events are happening and yet they all make sense as I was reading. The writing is clever and humorous. | Flash Fiction Winner: Three Things I Like About My Cactus by Susan Down, Victoria Comments from Judge Dr. Finnian Burnett: This story combines a seemingly mundane list about a plant with the poignant, often heartbreaking journey of a child going through the foster system. The list seems simple at first—things I like about my cactus—but the interwoven relationship between the cactus and the events of the main character’s life brings out the story in subtle ways. The author develops the narrator’s voice beautifully, in an almost matter of fact voice—a tone that creates dissonance with the real trauma of the main character and also brings the reader into the world of someone who has had to learn how to suppress their feelings in order to survive. The cactus metaphor parallels the narrator’s journey, often stunning in its simplicity, and always believably seen through the eyes of a child. “A cactus can stay with you,” the narrator writes in their list, and the underlying subtext is that people don’t. This story will stay with me for a long time. Flash Fiction Runner Up: Harold and Peg by Linda K. Thompson, Port Alberni Comments from Judge Dr. Finnian Burnett: This story is deceptively simple—a senior couple who have made a life together in a way that works for them. But the subtle humour of this story makes it stand out. The author blends the surreal, a splitting of everything down the middle, with the real—a couple who are tired of having to compromise and tells a story of an entire lifetime in just a few short words. The author also manages to drive home the theme with the last sentence—carrying through both the absurdity and the humour. An absolutely delightful story with characters who somehow feel quite genuine and believable, fleshed out through the details of their rather unusual agreement. Poetry Winner: Ringtone by Joanna Streetly, Tofino Comments from Judge Kerry Gilbert: “Ringtone” builds immediate intrigue with the image/line/metaphor “Morphine is a grey army helicopter coming at me, no clearance” and continues to layer image after heavy sensory image to add to “the weight” of this poem. The weight is the long poetic line; the weight is the aesthetic of a solid prose block with no white space; the weight is the sophisticated allusion to Gauguin’s Polynesia; the weight is a surprising poetic leap from helicopter to “I am a sloth;” the weight is thematically what puts us in any morphine needing state in the first place. “Breathe, a voice says” but the density of this poem says otherwise, and the reader too is also “crushed by a helicopter” in a poetic act so gorgeous, so gracious and honest, that the reader feels empathy and gratitude for this authentic poem about the human condition. Poetry Runner Up: Jacob's Ladder by Clare Sharpe, Victoria Comments from Judge Kerry Gilbert: “Jacob’s Ladder” is a beautifully constructed, complex/layered poetic understanding of something very complex and layered—a son’s spectrum diagnosis. The narrative lines take us through fragments of Jacob’s experience in this life, as metaphorical ladder: “the ladder he climbs to touch the lowering sky” but also as ladder for a witnessing parent that goes both up and down: “Oh my Sun, oh my son—/for you I would descend into perpetual darkness.” The superb imagery of things that exist both up and down—“Eastern Greys and the smaller/European Reds” and “the faceless fish”—take the reader through these highs and lows of navigation. The diction is stunning in this poem, with lines like: “fest of phosphenes, and watches contrails” and “yoked together in our syzygy” and “into the depths of the abyssopelagic.” The poem leaves us with the tender image of: “the faceless fish/learn to adapt,/how, in blackness,/they find a way/to generate/their own light,/and modify their soft bodies/to survive.” Gorgeous! |
Creative Nonfiction Shortlist
| Flash Fiction Shortlist
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Poetry Shortlist
| Short Story Shortlist
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Congratulations to everyone who made the short list.
We are so proud of all our entrants; you made the final selections incredibly difficult.
The Winners and Runners Up will be announced on December 12th.
Creative Non-Fiction Long List
Honourable Mentions
| Flash Fiction Long List
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Poetry Long List
| Short Fiction Long List
Honourable Mentions
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The FBCW 2023 Literary Contests Shortlist will be announced on Tuesday, December 5.