Let’s imagine that you have aspirations to write fiction and have never written before. You decide to write a short story, because writing a novel straight away is too daunting, and you write and write and write and work hard at it and revise your work and write some more, and once you have arrived at something that you feel confident is finished you feel ready to send it out into the world.
Then things get difficult. Who do you send your story to? You are not involved in the literary scene (if indeed there even is such a thing). You do not work in publishing. You are not a journalist. You do not personally know any published writers, let alone editors. You are very definitely outside the circle of people in the know about these things, and you are almost certainly on your own. Your options, you will soon realise, are limited.
Aspiring non-fiction writers (critics, journalists, etc.) can submit their work to many different publications – from newspapers to magazines to trade publications – in the hope of being published and developing their talents. Writers of fiction cannot.
In the US, (literally) hundreds of “little” magazines sandwiched between the Paris Review and n+1 in New York and McSweeney’s and the Believer in San Francisco are flourishing. New writers are given more of a chance than ever before as competition among magazines to publish the best fiction has intensified (or mollified, depending on who you’re talking to about this) since the beginning of the “Era of the MFA”. Your submission options, for better or for worse, are wide-ranging.
In Britain, where to submit? Granta, the “magazine of new writing”, is an obvious choice and an excellent publication, by far the most professional operation this side of the Atlantic. But a closer look at back issues will quickly reveal that while Granta is indeed the home of new writing, it is largely that of established writers. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find Craig Raine’s Areté, the venerable Ambit (where J G Ballard was Fiction Editor many years ago) and Litro in the print sections, and the likes of 3:AM Magazine and Untitled Books online, where limits are often placed on word counts.
In Ireland, the situation is (proportionally) better. Brendan Barrington’s Dublin Review and Declan Meade’s Stinging Fly stand out amidst a host of others, not least in giving new writers and writing a chance.
Not much choice, is there? And it might well be that you, freshly-blooded writer of fiction, might sift out some of the options mentioned above on aesthetic or ideological grounds. (Which is to say: you might realise that some of these publications may, to some degree or other, favour certain styles of writing that you do not align yourself with.)
It is time to disclose that I am an editor at a (London-based!) literary magazine called The White Review. We publish fiction, among other things, in print and online, on a quarterly and monthly basis respectively. And we always, in every print and online issue, publish new writers alongside more established ones.
And now, thanks to a generous grant from the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, we are launching the imaginatively titled “White Review Short Story Prize”, awarding £2,500 to the best short story by an unpublished writer each year. The first prize is open to submissions until 1 March 2013. It will be judged by the Booker-shortlisted writer Deborah Levy, literary agent Karolina Sutton and Alex Bowler, editorial director at Jonathan Cape, and Tom McCarthy, author of Men in Space, Remainder and C, will award the prize at a party in April 2013.
Even more exciting, the winning entry will be published in a print edition of the White Review, and all shortlisted writers will be published online.
This isn’t simply about demonstrating the vitality of a form – the short story – which is too often neglected in Britain and Ireland. We would also like to encourage writing appropriate to our times. (None of that “readibility” business.) The judges will be looking for short stories that explore and expand the possibilities of the form. We encourage submissions from all literary genres, and there are no restrictions on theme or subject matter. The only emphasis is on ambitious, imaginative and innovative approaches to creative writing.
Aspiring writers: pick up your pens! Send us your stories! Our culture needs new writers, new writers need exposure. We need writing for our times.
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