The Cape/Observer Short Story Prize is now 4 years old and continues to go from strength to strength, with a range of high quality judges adding their weight to the credibility of the award.
Hundreds of people entered the 2010 competition, with a longlist of 20 finally picked. A short list of 6 was then drawn up and from that the final winner announced - Stephen Collins's Room 208.
Room 208 is about a couple whose honeymoon is cut short by bad weather. Retreating to a hotel, a strange inertia falls over them and they find themselves unable to leave. Collins, 30, lives in Hertford, where he makes a living as a freelance cartoonist and illustrator. When asked why he decided to enter he replied:
"Well, the brief was quite open-ended. That made it a much nicer thing than most of my usual commissions. And the layout required by the Observer was quite useful for what I wanted to do in terms of double-page spreads. I like comics that use the possibilities of the old-fashioned, printed, double-page format. I'm not sure, for instance, that this would work on an iPad or one of the frame-by-frame comics viewers you get online, which is rather the way comics are going at the moment. I think they'll lose something in that change, but maybe I'm just a luddite."
His idea was inspired by the way couples have their own private world, one that nobody else really has access to. "I wanted to do a love story, but one that was ugly and a bit weird."
Anna Mill's Square Eyes took the competition's runner up prize.For support with short story writing, check out our Writers section of the main website.
No comments:
Post a Comment