Eleven Stories: The Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize Shortlist Selection 2021

the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize Shortlist Selection #3

by Paige Cowan-Hall, Isha Karki, Nick Mulgrew

Eleven Stories 2021 collects the shortlist from the fourth The Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize

‘I loved reading the shortlist selection which realizes the Desperate Literature team’s ambition to reimagine and diversify contemporary writing. The stories represented are inquisitive, irreverential, critical, and fully committed to their respective creative projects. I’ve never been more hopeful for the future of fiction, and the Desperate Literature Prize plays no small part in this.’ — Isabel Waidner, 2021 Judge

Genres: Short Stories

95 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2021

Reviews

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize is for original works of less than 2000 words, and, in the Prize's own words, the aim "is both to celebrate the best of new short fiction and to give winners the most visibility possible for their writing", winning writers receiving writing residencies and all shortlisted authors getting the opportunity to publish their work, both in this annual anthology, but also in associated publications - see https://desperateliterature.com/prize/

The equivalent anthology for 2019 is Eleven Stories - The Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize Shortlist Selection 2019 (a shortlist which include the brilliant Shola von Reinhold who would go on to win two major prizes for their first novel Lote) and for 2020 Eleven Stories: The Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize Shortlist Selection 2020

The prize also stands out for the stellar judging line up - which have included some of the UK's finest writers such as Rachel Cusk, Eley Williams, Claire-Louise Bennett. The 2021 panel is perhaps the best jury I've seen for any literary prize featuring Isabel Waidner, Derek Owusu and Ottessa Moshfegh.

The full list of the 2021 shortlisted stories is as follows:

A Certain Degree of Ownership | Jan Carson
After Western Deep | Jack Gain
An Account of the [War Heroines] of the First Independence War [by An Unnamed Soldier] | Isha Karki (RUNNER-UP)
Cables | Phillippa Finkemeyer
Gannin Hyem | Victoria Manifold
Ohenemaa | Paige Cowan-Hall (WINNER)
Raise, or How to Break Free of the Ground, or The Lakeland Dialect for
‘Slippery’ is ‘Slape’ and to Form it in the Mouth Requires an Act of Falling | Katie Hale (WINNER OF THE GEORGIA WRITERS’ HOUSE PRIZE)
Section 22 | Nick Mulgrew (RUNNER-UP)
Skullseeds | Samuel Glyn
Spread | Campbell Andersen
Two Different Decembers | Erin Scudder

Isabel Waidner's take on the entries:

‘I loved reading the shortlist selection which realizes the Desperate Literature team’s ambition to reimagine and diversify contemporary writing. The stories represented are inquisitive, irreverential, critical, and fully committed to their respective creative projects. I’ve never been more hopeful for the future of fiction, and the Desperate Literature Prize plays no small part in this.'

This was a diverse, and fascinating collection, with talented writers doing more with 2,000 words than most authors listed for other prizes do with 50 times that length.

It feels unfair to single out one story but my favourite was the gloriously irresponsible narrator of Jan Carson's A Certain Degree of Ownership.

There are three of them, or rather two and a half. Anything younger than sixteen counts as half in my book. Sean disagrees. Sean likes children. Occasionally, he raises the possibility of acquiring some. I've told him I'm not interested. I suspect Sean has no specific interest either. He sees children as something which should be done at our age. He has similar feelings about personal trainers.

I make my way up the beach, squeezing the water out of my hair. I stare at them. They haven't noticed me. She is leafing through a glossy magazine, pausing between pages to tip the ash from her cigarette into the sand. He is dozing on his front, one hand draped heavily across her thigh as if afraid someone will run off with her while he sleeps. Her thigh is the fake mahogany colour of a flat pack desk. His swimming trunks are Barbie pink and printed with anthropomorphic pineapples. The pineapples dance across the hump of his backside, shaking their tiny maracas and tambourines like billy-o. The baby is wearing nothing but a white, disposable nappy. It is stuffing sand into its mouth in greedy handfuls. The sand is stuck to the snot running out of its nose. I look at the baby's face. It reminds me of an ice cream dipped in hundreds and thousands, but dirtier.

I should feel sorry for the baby. I don't. The person I feel sorry for is myself. I shouldn't have to share my beach with them.

Highly worthwhile

[José · Rating 4 out of 5]

All short stories here are remarkably well written and a few are truly compelling. I definitely will keep my eye out for more editions of this contest and try to get those edited in previous years.

[Sébastien · Rating 3 out of 5]

This selection of Eleven Stories from The Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize for 2021 is a refreshing read. Last year’s winning story, Ohenemaa by Paige Cowan-Hall, is one of my favourites in the collection. An Account of the [War Heroines] 16 of the First Independence War [by an Unnamed Soldier] by Isha karki, Cables by Phillippa Finkemeyer, and Skullseeds by Samuel Glyn are brilliant stories, too. My absolute favourite is a Certain Degree of Ownership by Jan Carson.

Each story is unique in their own way with fresh storytelling and there is certain cohesiveness in this collection. I find a couple of the stories hard to comprehend as some words and phrases were spelt/written differently which I believe was the writer’s choice to portray the authenticity of the regions the characters were set in. And it is totally fine. I’m just pointing my unfamiliarity with certain parts of narration for someone foreign to such part of the language. Despite this, the stylistic devices and a few experimental writings found in these stories are impressive. I was fascinated by the unexpected yet engrossing narratives these writers delivered. It is indeed a remarkable reading experience. I wish great things for these writers and look forward to reading more from them.

The Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize aims to promote the best in new short fiction. They offer a wide range of opportunities for the new writers in addition to the financial prizes. It has partnered with literary residencies, bookshops across the EU as well as with multiple online and print journals for all shortlisted authors to get more visibility, too.

The deadline for the 2022 contest is mid-April and this year's judging panel includes Natasha Brown, Anton Hur, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Joanna Walsh. For more detailed information, please check at their site, https://desperateliterature.com/prize/. Thank you Desperate Literature for providing an e-review copy in exchange with an honest review.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bought this randomly because I missed reading short stories (and I don't read enough contemporary fiction). There's some good stuff in here, and a few stand-out stories. My favourites were "Section 22", "A Certain Degree of Ownership", "Spread", and "Cables".

[Yoana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've loved Desperate Literature, an indie bookshop in Madrid, since I first stumbled upon it in 2016. They'd organised their shelves based not on author or genre, but on mood - books for when you're feeling this way or that, with a prominent shelf of "books for when you're desperate". I loved that concept on first sight, because literature has been a huge comfort to me in trying times and moments of despondency. (They've since moved to a more conventional arrangement.)

This book contains the shortlisted candidates for the bookshop's prize for new short fiction, up to 2000 words. It's held with the support of a number of other organisations, some of which are also favourites of mine, like The Second Shelf. I found all the stories intriguing, even though I obviously liked some more than others. What I think unites them is a palpable sense of novelty: these are truly slices of new fiction, concerned with very modern issues and preoccupations, and moving comfortably in a more experimental (to the extent that is even possible in our post-postmodernist literary world) environment when it comes to form. There's visual rearrangement (the story is told with a short paragraph in the middle of each page) in Nick Mulgrew's Section 22 that creates a cinematic impression, like snippets of the character's daily life in a montage.

I especially enjoyed the creative approach to form in Isha Kakri's An Account of the [War Heroines] 16 of the First Independence War [by an Unnamed Soldier], which echoes bits of The Handmaid's Tale - it's introduced (ingenously, in a footnote) as a piece of found writing, an excerpt of a diary, which is used in an obviously authoritarian Indian government's propagandistic celebration of an independence war, and it's full of redactions rendered in square brackets. There's a bit of co-creation in the reading process here, because you replace the obviously redacted words and parts of sentences in the text as you go, wondering what truthful feeling or impression was obscured with a party-approved sentiment.

Another story, Victoria Manifold's Gannin Hyem, plays with the very possibility of telling a story, starting several times, shifting starting posints, routes, words, perspectives, and inevitably hitting a wall, because the narrator finds it literally impossible to approach what she means to talk about - how her little brother died while in her care. She never does manage to tell it, but at least it ends on a new attempt, as opposed to a resignation.

My favourite story in the collection though is quite conventional when it comes to form, Jan Carson's A Certain Degree of Ownership, about a woman's afternoon at her favourite beach - a mundane setting with horror-movie-level sense of tension and menace. I felt in the company of literary brilliance while reading it. It manages the feat of making a confessional style story sound fresh in our saturated environment of personal oversharing; it cuts through the dull drone of performative frankness and presents actual, uncut honesty. It's super funny, too, I laughed out loud at a few places.

The collection also features work that ruminates on the experience of the moden working class, delves deep into personal loss and guilt, race, capitalism, isolation and connection, horror, cultural clashes, even historical reimaginings. It's well worth reading. I'll definitely be following some of those author's future work.

[Lina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only a few of these were more to my taste, but there's a lot to learn from the crafting of these stories!

[Alice Lambert]

I actually read 2024 but it's not Goodreads yet. Does anyone know how to add a book lol.