So today at work (my 8th day in a row of a 10 day stretch), I saw an email congratulating me on taking 2nd place in Fiction for the Kentuckiana Metroversity Writing Contest for my story "Runaway." And it was kind of one of those slo-mo moments because, well, my computer was really slow at the moment and the Gmail notification bit creeped on screen with the power of a sloth on Luudes, but anyway, it was some very good news considering that every day I spend at work is nothing but another pile of bad news. And if you can't tell that I'm rather sleep deprived, well I must be hiding it well, but in any case, I shook my fists mightily in the air and gave a single hoot and hollar in celebration before going back to the grindstone of getting ground down by THE MAN.
The only bad thing is the folks at the contest want me to come down and do a reading on April 15...kinda short notice, and there's probably a good chance I won't even have the day off, so I'm guessing that there's no way for any intervention there, but none the less, maybe "Runaway" will get her five minutes of fame during a reading at residency....
I miss all y'all Spalding folks, and can't wait to commiserate in a month and a half.
And if you're interested, here's a brief bit about "Runaway:" The story is told as a triptych and follows the life of Clare (another self, somewhere). Clare lives a life of self inflicted isolation, and when her past comes up to bite her in the ass (her father, that she hasn't spoken to in 12 years up and dies), she falls apart and goes into downward spiral of misery and regret. The whole thing is paced by Foreground/Background scenes that more or less reveal Clare's life and (somewhat poor) decisions.
*Edit: Here's what the Judge had to say about the story: "'Runaway' succeeds by blending its fractured narrative with fractured formal structures. While the visual imagery flashes all over the periphery and the reader's eyes must at times dance across the page, the narrative is strengthened rather than obscured by these well-considered features of the story's construction."
2 comments:
Way to go, Drew. I actually had a poem get 3rd place in the Metroversity Contest back when I was working on my undergrad. So you're among prestigous company, no doubt about it.
Freakin' great. Nice work. We'll throw one down in Louisville in a few months...
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