Thankyou to everyone who entered The Australian Literature Review’s first short fiction competition.

The winners are:

1st place: $500

Daddy by Sam Stephens

(Sam has a website for his fiction at www.samstephens.com)

2nd place: $200

No Matter What by Bronwen Evans

3rd place: $100

The Zombie by Madeleine Whiteaker

Congratulations to Sam, Bronwen and Madeleine!

Sophie King – short story writer, novelist, author of several books on writing fiction, and creative writing teacher at Oxford University and privately – has provided her professional opinion of the winning and runner-up story.

“I thought both stories were very powerful but the one which took my breath away, both in terms of language, plot and overall polish, was Daddy by Sam Stephens. I felt it tapped into raw human emotion which most parents would identify with. I liked the fact that it was from the father’s point of view but that it wasn’t soppy. This is a man whose background is not sanitised. He has a drunken wife and he has possibly killed a man by the end. But his love for his family is so strong that somehow this doesn’t seem as shocking as it should. It also has an ending which brings us neatly back to the beginning.

No Matter What by Bronwen Evans was also very well written and had great human emotion. It’s also an original take on a subject which both scares and attracts us. However, I personally needed more of a definite ending or at least something that tied it up with a slight twist at the end. I do feel that if the author did that, she could find a market for it. As it stands, I feel it could be more of a first chapter for a novel – which in fact, might work very well.”

   — Sophie King (www.sophieking.info)

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The Australian Literature Review
www.auslit.net