Winner? Take all.

The Journey Prize winners were announced yesterday. Winners plural. Ten to be exact. This edition of the Journey Prize breaks 33-years of tradition, which usually sees a long list of 10-12, a short list of 3 (and once, two), and one winner. That’s standard operating procedure for literary prizes - a broad spotlight that narrows until the winner stands alone, holding the pot. But for this special edition, which is a showcase of Black talent, the jury chose to do something different. The jury, by the way, was David Chariandy, Esi Edugyan, and Canisia Lubrin. Name a more iconic trio. I’ll wait.

I don’t know why they chose to go this route but I’ve been on my share of juries and have some ideas. Sometimes, the winner is unanimous, a book or story that stands so obviously head and shoulders above its peers that there’s almost no discussion. Just as often, the jury is divided and the winner is a compromise, the first choice of two jurors but not the third. Or the entry that everyone can agree they love equally though it isn’t anyone’s first choice. Which is no slight on the winner because by the time a jury gets down to choosing a short list, an entry has already run the mother fucking gauntlet.

Stories in the Journey Prize anthology must charm many, many gatekeepers. First, the editorial board of a literary magazine greenlights publication. These mags have vanishing resources, limited space, and strict word counts. I guest edited one issue of one magazine and it was excruciating to turn away stories, compelling, beautifully composed stories, on the grounds that I had twenty five pages and had to choose the combination of prose that fit exactly within those pages, no more, no less.

Second, the story must be chosen, out of all the stories published that year, as one of three that gets put forward for the prize, assuming the publication in question has the resources and wherewithal to submit.

Third, the jury must like the story enough to longlist it. Any time I do jury duty, I’m acutely aware of the idiosyncratic nature of taste. A different combination of judges reading the exact same stories or books could have and would have made different choices. The year I juried for the Journey there were stories that could have absolutely made the longlist if a different combination of authors were making the call. And by the time we got to the short list, it was agony. That’s often what happens. There are three spots and maybe five or six books that (in the jury’s idiosyncratic opinion, in that particular moment of that particular day) deserve a place.

What does it mean, then, to award one winner and what does it mean when a jury chooses ten? I haven’t got insider information and was not - sadly - a fly on the wall during deliberations but if I was on the jury, for this historic year when emerging Black authors are finally being offered a small portion of their due, I would also be inclined to say fuck it, all these stories and these authors deserve the spotlight.

You know what I think is revealing? Have a look at where the winning stories were published. Twelve stories total. Four(!) from Prism International. (Good eggs) Two from no where. Two stories that were turned away at every gate. Or two stories that were nurtured in private because those authors didn’t see themselves or their stories reflected in magazines. Or… well, I don’t know. Maybe two stories that were written specifically because the doors were thrown wide and the guards took a holiday.

Taste is a tiny bit nature and mostly nurture, formed by the stories we were raised on and the steady diet we were fed by teachers and book sellers. And if, for most of your life, all you see and read is one kind of story, told by one kind of person, guess what happens to your taste. When gatekeepers share the same narrow taste…. that’s how you end up with a paucity of Black representation. It’s nothing to do with writers or their stories and everything to do with flawed gatekeeping.

In a perfect, equitable world we wouldn’t even need special editions. Good on the jury for handing out ten crowns. Massive congratulations to Christina Cooke, A.Z. Farah, Zilla Jones, Sarah Kabamba, Téa Mutonji, Lue Palmer, Terese Mason Pierre, Jasmine Sealy, Dianah Smith, and Iryn Tushabe, whose twelve stories I cannot wait to read. You can pre-order your copy of the Journey Prize Stories now.

Short story endings

The other day, I ran into Eva Crocker and Susie Taylor and we got to talking about short story endings. They’re so tricky to write, I complained. To which Susie said: Yeah, there are only so many times you can end a story with someone dying or getting on a plane.

Ending a novel is infinitely easier than ending a short story. Actually, almost everything about the craft of writing is easier in long vs. short form. Regardless, here are four ways to end a short story:

“There are only so many times you can end a story with someone dying or getting on a plane.” — Susie Taylor, author and astute person

First off, BACKSPACE. If you’ve already written all the way to the end you might want to reconsider the last sentence, the last word, or the last paragraph. Is it really needed? Many writers, myself included, make the mistake of summarizing things for the reader, just in case they didn’t get the point. Originally, the final sentence of “Butter Tea at Starbucks” was something like: Everything feels miraculous. And my writing group said: you’ve nailed the final scene but knock it off with this dumb line, already. They were right so I did.

Sometimes the ending is lurking somewhere else in the story and the trick is to go back and find it, then cut and paste so that the ending is a flashback. I struggled with “Happy Adventure” for years before finally moving the second last scene to the very end.

Other times, the ending is a flash forward. Check out Tessa Hadley’s story “An Abduction” which ends with a big leap into the future. It’s disorienting in the best possible way.

One way to conclude a story is to take some previously innocuous image from earlier in the story and reproduce in the form of an epiphany at the end. I learned this trick after binge reading a bunch of stories by Souvankham Thammavongsa. Have a look at Souvankham’s O. Henry-prize winning story “Slingshot.” In the third last scene a character talks about a tornado. It’s a bit obscure, what he says, and for a moment the reader is left thinking: “what’s this guy on about?” but it’s also so fleeting that it’s almost forgettable. Except then at the very end, the tornado returns in an unexpected way, gloriously described so this time we are left with a crisp image. (Read the story and you’ll understand what I’m saying)

Why does this particular sleight of hand work so well? Because a reliable way to end a story well is to surprise the reader WHILE making them feel that in hindsight the ending makes sense. And readers also like foreshadowing. Good murder mysteries do both these things well - surprise ending that also feels authentic because in hindsight you realize the gut punch was lying in wait all along.

I don’t mean to give the impression that a neat little trick is going to be satisfying to a reader without substance in place. Fundamentally, stories are about transformation. Something has to change by the end: either the character or the reader’s perception of the situation/ character or both.