Status Updates From Tomorrow There Will Be Sun:...

Just read the first prize entry. It had a rather delightful 'eleanor oliphant' type energy. It wasn't an established author - it was someone emerging who had a shortlist, a scholarship, and a unpublished novel chosen for a development program...

The further I get into this anthology, there are a lot of 'trauma-dump' type stories from first time writers (probably half) but there's space for other things too

There's one REALLY good story here, "WWRGD". It's about a guy, he's 30 and going on his first dates, lives with his mum who instructs him on what to wear/to pay for both of them.. oh it's wholesome!!! I thought he might be a bit special needs but it turns out to be something else...

This writer has a book out, has written for fairfax, ABC, etc and it shows

there are exceptions but i feel like a lot of these pieces are more for the writer to process their issues than to be for an audience. past a base level of acceptable writing the judges seem to be looking for themes of "hope" which they've muddled that up with "surviving some sort of trauma" (usually death). reading them all at once is somewhat of a downer :(

i don't mind dark stuff but this is kind of hard going

Found a second story that I liked. It was literary in a KYD kind of way. It was a gen x memoir piece about her childhood growing up as second generation australian in cabramatta (I think?) and paying tribute to her mum.

I was kind of surprised that the author didn't have any publishing credits in her bio, her writing was excellent

found one story i liked!

a cat this guy befriends drops dead. guy takes the dead cat home. next thing you know he gets a knock on the door, lady asks him, can you keep an eye out for my missing cat? he realises it's the dead cat in the next room...

That's a dilemma! (the story is actually about the loss of his mother not a the cat but yeah) The voice was strong, clearly different to the others, it was good!

a common thread in these stories seems to be 'this bad thing happened' and that the authors seem to be from an older generation

My system for this is just to read a page or two of each story to see if any of them resonate. None so far. They range from very literary fiction to memoir-y pieces