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Short Memoir Prize 2024: RESULTS

Winners

Short-list

Long-list

 

On behalf of all of us at Fish, we congratulate the 10 winners who’s memoir made it into the Fish Anthology 2024 (due to be launched in July ’24 at the West Cork Literary Festival), and to those writers who made the long and short-lists, well done too. 

Thank you to Sean Lusk, for the time and enthusiasm that he put into selecting the winners.

Notes from Sean on the 10 winning memoirs.

(About Sean’s latest novel.)

(There were 717 entries in total)


 

The 10 Winners:

Selected by Sean Lusk. Author of The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley

 

FIRST

Rand-Richards-Cooper

Chess with the Wehrmacht
by Rand Richards Cooper (USA)

 

SECOND

David LongstaffI Should Have held Him
by David Longstaff (UK)

 

THIRD

Daisy O'CleeBefore the Sun
by Daisy O’Clee (UK)

 

 

 

HONORARY MENTIONS (In no particular order.)

Sara Green

Train to Nowhere
by Sara Green (Australia)

 

 

Sylvia TortiThe Mortal Shift
by Sylvia Torti (USA)

 

 

Kirsti CockburnThe Lone Ranger
by Kirsty Cockburn (UK)

 

 

Arthur WrightSketches of Spain
by Arthur Wright (UK)

 

 

Gemma GreenThese Shoes
by Gemma Green  (UK)

 

 

Brian JonesAlfie Plum, The Unspoken Words
by Brian Jones (UK)

 

 

Stephen Bridger

Bubbles 
by Stephen Bridger (UK)

 

 

 

 

 

Notes from judge, Sean Lusk:

This very strong set of memoirs deliver emotional weight, combining the personal and particular with the universal. Each one is touching, though often in surprising ways: the loss of a child is a consistent theme – sometimes a child simply lost because they have left home, sometimes more searingly because a baby is lost in childbirth. Loss of parents, too, features in many of these memoirs. Significant international events – war, terrorism, and climate crisis, make their appearance, as do crumbling public services. The unifying factor is that each is described through the eyes of memory – subjective and not always wholly reliable. That the subject of memoir is so often personal trauma should not surprise us – these are so often the experiences that burn deep and which, when the time comes, we feel the need to tell.

 

Bubbles is an absorbing account of the often anarchic experience of a junior doctor working in a hospital in chaos, surrounded by larger than life characters – each going through their own intensely personal traumas.  Alfie Plum, the Unspoken Words is a tender account of a taciturn man’s wartime experiences, as imagined by a nephew who has to fill in the gaps. These Shoes is a mother’s reflections on losing a son because he has grown up and away, the process of redecorating what had been his bedroom almost a form of grief. Sketches of Spain is a gripping account of the Madrid bombing of 2004 and the public response to it, and to the government the electorate threw out when it became clear they had tried to exploit the tragedy to win an election. The Lone Ranger tells of two women seeking a man willing to be the father to the child they hope to conceive. He turns out to be not quite what he appears to be. The Mortal Shift intertwines the landscape of the Colorado desert and the search for water with one woman’s diagnosis of breast cancer. Train to Nowhere is a wonderfully written piece describing a chance encounter on a train, and a reminder that a memoir can be every bit as significant when recounting nothing more than an hour or two in a stranger’s company.

Third placed memoir Before the Sun is a moving and gripping account of dealing with a mother’s sudden death, while coping with the final stages of pregnancy. Beautifully observed, intensely honest, I felt in reading it as if I knew these people intimately. Second placed I Should have Held Him is a hugely moving account of the loss of a baby in childbirth, told from the perspective of a father who struggles to come to terms with that loss, trying desperately to be the man he wishes to be in this moment of profound heartbreak. Written with deceptive simplicity, it works on every level, and reminds us of the importance of holding each other, and of holding on. First placed Chess with the Wehrmacht is a stunning piece of writing. Set in 1987 in Mainz it describes how a young American, eager to understand the mindset of the wartime generation of Germans, slowly befriends a group of old men who play chess in the park. Week by week he gets to the heart of what is revealed to be a great self-deception – cynicism, cordial and absolute, as the memoir so precisely tells us. This is memoir as history, as travelogue, as memory, as storytelling, its observations striking at the heart of something truly important and revealing. When memoir does that for us, it does us all a great service.  

 

 

A LITTLE ABOUT THE WINNERS

 

Rand Richards Cooper is the author of two works of fiction, The Last to Go and Big As Life. As an essayist and journalist he has covered an alarming range of topics, from coed locker rooms to Indian casinos, Botox parties, the wonders of the F-word, the search for lost WW II submarines, the sexual politics of having your dog neutered, soccer and the meaning of life, the origins of jerk barbecue, and why McDonald’s should not be allowed to build on the corner of his street.  Which, by the way, is in Hartford, Connecticut. 

 

David Longstaff began writing stories two years ago. He has been shortlisted and a winner in six UK competitions. His dark humour is always present. He is an inch shorter than he was, has size 12 feet and his enlarged prostrate is currently being treated. He no longer owns a dog.

 

Daisy  O’Clee reported for local newspapers in Kent in the late 1990s. She delivered aid to Kosovan refugees in Albania and visited Brunei to interview the Gurkhas before they relocated to her home town of Folkestone. She has campaigned on behalf of cancer patients, children in the care system and people with severe mental illness. She lives in Hove with her children Mollie and Lenny, and is excited to be retraining in rebirthing breathwork.

 

Sara Green was born in the Caribbean, then taken to England by cruel parents.  Finding it too cold, she backpacked to Australia.  Her ancestors gave her the globe-trotting gene and she is busy writing their stories – a murdered great aunt, a ‘bolter’ grandmother, and an African explorer great-grandfather.  On her travels, she writes vignettes of people she meets.  Train to Nowhere is one of these.  Sara writes Creative Non-Fiction, Fiction and Memoir in the Australian bush and Sydney.

 

Sylvia Torti is an ecologist and writer. She holds a Ph.D. in biology and is the author of two novels (The Scorpion’s Tail, Curbstone Press, 2005 and Cages, Schaffner Press, 2017). Her short stories and essays have been published in numerous magazines and edited volumes. (https://sylviatorti.com/). She has just been named President of College of the Atlantic in Maine, USA, where students from across the world grapple with questions of human ecology.

 

Kirsty Cockburn lives on the South coast in the UK. She works in Communications and enjoys writing, running, swimming and cycling. Her favourite times tend to find her on a paddleboard or in a kayak having adventures with her two inspiring boys.

 

Arthur Wright. In the year 2000, after gaining a degree at Nottingham Trent University in analogue photography, Arthur relocated to Madrid, Spain along with his wife and two-year-old son. Combining photography work with English teaching and writing, he embraced the culture and language, only returning in 2017 to study an MA in Fine Art. Presently he is writing, making art, and teaching in North Norfolk, with aspirations to return one day to the land of his heart.

 

Gemma Green is an ex-Bailiff, now online tarot reader. She has a Masters in poetry from UEA and recently took up memoir in the hope of making sense of the past. She writes best from her sofa, surrounded by snacks and wrote this short memoir in secret. Now it’s getting published, she might have to tell the family what she’s been up to. Then again, she might not.

 

Brian Jones grew up in an industrial suburb of Manchester. His working life was steeped in IT, spiced with periods as  a civil servant,  sous chef, painter and decorator, photographer… In 2014 he started to write and in 2023 graduated from Chichester University with an MA in Creative Writing. He has had a number of short satirical pieces published and is currently studying philosophy and writing a novel set against the backdrop of Thatcher’s Britain. 

 

Stephen Bridger is a gastroenterologist, and part-time husband, father and writer. He has spent his life working and teaching in understaffed hospitals. If he isn’t catching up on sleep, then he likes to run and swim. He is too mean to pay for therapy. Bubbles is his first attempt at remembering.

 

 


 

SHORT-LIST (in alphabetical order. There were 717 entries in total)

Short-list of 26 memoirs

 

Afric McClinchy

Bluff

Arthur Wright

Sketches of Spain

Brian Jones

Alfie Plum, The Unspoken Words

Christine McDonough

Melancholy – Regret’s Shorter, Pimply Cousin

Daisy O’Clee

 Before the sun

Damien Ryan

Skeokhojeong

David Longstaff

I should have held him 

David McLoghlin

Extract From the Darien Gap

Ellie Rees

Memories of Joyce

Garret Dwyer Joyce

Bombs and Bullets

Gemma Green

These Shoes

Joel Bond

One Foot in Front of the Other

Julie Leoni

May All Sentient Beings Be Free From Suffering and From the Causes of Suffering

Katherine Drago

Ordinary Magic

Kirsty Cockburn

The Lone Ranger

Layla O’Mara

It Is Here That Nettles Grow

Martin Cromie

Absolved From Guilt

Michelle Brock

Walking on ice

Mike Murray

Dan the Man

Olivia Rana

The Woman at the TUI Blue Hotel

Philippa Groom

My Hummingbird Heart

Rachel Winner

Roommates

Rand Richards Cooper

Chess with the Wehrmacht 

Sara Green

Train to Nowhere

Stephen Bridger

Bubbles 

Sylvia Torti

The Mortal Shift

 

 

 

 


 

LONG-LIST (in alphabetical order. There were 717 entries)

Long-list of 79 memoirs 

 

Afric McGlinchey

Bluff

Alain Speed

Alzheimer’s

Alan Passey

Luigi and The President

Amelia Aston

Laila

Andrea Breen

Murmurings

Ann Fischer

Daddy’s Girl

Annette Corbett

The Long Goodbye

Arthur Wright

Sketches of Spain (1 and 2)

BARBARA Rouillard

Without Notice

Brian Jones

Alfie Plum – The Unspoken Words

Brian Witherden

Land of My Mother’s

C.P. Nield

The Twin Dilemma

Caroline Heffernan

The Phone Call

Carolyn Colburn

You Get What You Need

chris youle

Between the Cries

Chrissie Horton

The Private Life of Danny Bloom

Christine McDonough

Melancholy – Regret’s Shorter, Pimply Cousin

Claudia Cruttwell

Village Life

Daisy O’Clee

Before The Sun

Damian Ryan

Seokhojeong

David Hughes

Rebecca

David Longstaff

I should have held him

David McLoghlin

Darien Gap

David Ralph

May the Sun Keep Shining

Deirdre Anne Hines

My Beautiful Father -For-Get-Me-Not

Derek Perry

My Tale of Two Cities

Devon Becker

Who Will Conquer

Éanlaí P. Cronin

I Love You

Eithne O’Halloran

Kingdom of the Stars

Ellen Birrell

Deep End

Ellie Rees

Memories of Joyce

Evie Lambert

Freedom of Movement

Garret Dwyer Joyce

Bombs and Bullets

Gemma Green

These Shoes

Gina G

My Mother’s Mirror

James Garvey

Bonjour Banal

Jill Lewis

Arcs of a Life

Joel Bond

One Foot in Front of the Other

John Kaufmann

Eighty-Sixed

Judy Bridges Bridges

A Photographic Memory

Julie Leoni

May all sentient beings be free

Karen Samski

Fame and Infamy: Bridgework 87

Karin van Heerden

Goodbye

Katherine Drago

Ordinary Magic: The Spellbinding Nature of Fireflies

Kerry Beckett

Nursery Rhymes

Kirsty Cockburn

The Lone Ranger

Layla O’Mara

It Is Here That Nettles Grow

Letty Butler

The Dinosaur Museum

L J Mercer

Ding Dong

Marion Henderson

The Taste of Hate

Mark Cole

Unzipped

Martin Cromie

Absolved From Guilt

Matilda KIME

The Day Player.

Matt Taylor

Gone

Michelle Brock

Walking on Ice

Mike Murray

Dan the Man

Morgan Barbour

Teeth

Nicholas Murray

Ballymac

Noellyn Fraser

The Sailor and the Siren

Olivia Rana

To the Woman at the TUI Blue Hotel

Palli Ward

Pig-jawed

Patricia Guthrie

Mum

Philippa Groom

My Hummingbird Heart

Qingqing Cai

What I Misremember About a Dead Man

Rachel Winner

Roommates

Rand Richards Cooper

Chess With the Wehrmacht

Riba Taylor

Travelers

Robert Coles

DAKAR BY DAY

Robert James-Robbins

‘Nounou’

Sheena Wilkinson

How I Killed My Granda

Sheena Wilkinson

How Much is that Doggie in the Window

Simon Beechinor

Yesterday’s Soldiers

Stephen Bridger

Bubbles

Steve Stevenson

Metamorphosis

SYLVIA TORTI

The Mortal Shift

Toni Thomas

Lilacs

Sara Jane Green

Train to Nowhere

Troy Spence

Four Acts

Vera Hough

Refueling With Care

 

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