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.
