Violence manifests in frightening ways
as perceptions of rationality shift and erode. Confronted with yet another
tragic attack on society just hours before we post the shortlist of the 2015
DNA-OUT OF PRINT Short Fiction Special themed around ‘Erosion’ I am driven to
reflect on the role that literature plays in making sense of who we are. We
addressed the question in the context of sexual and gender violence in the
Editorial Note of the March 2015 issue of Out of Print. In her weekly column in
the Bangalore Mirror, former Out of Print editor, Samhita Arni has been
examining why writers write. At the Chandigarh Literature Festival, where Out
of Print held a writing workshop last week, the politics of the responsibility
of writers and of literature was keenly evident, particularly when Nayantara
Sahgal was wildly and publicly attacked during the opening ceremony of the
festival.
The impact of fiction on the way society
thinks and acts lies in its ability to set a cultural tone that, in the long
term, must have an influence. This is, of course, most significant when writing
is strong, stories well crafted, and when subtlety and nuance layer the work.
With that in mind, we are pleased to announce the shortlist
of the 2015 DNA-OUT OF PRINT Short Fiction Special. The 17 stories, listed
below in order of submission date are brave and bold and deal with the theme, Erosion, in complex and interesting ways. Congratulations
to all the writers on the shortlist!
Every story on the longlist was read multiple times by each of
the Out of Print editors before we determined the stories that made it to the
next level. We thank all the authors on the longlist for sending us their
interesting and well-considered work and wish the writers on the shortlist luck
for the next stage.
The winner and four finalists of the
2015 DNA-OUT OF PRINT Short Fiction Special will be announced on Sunday, November
22, and their stories will appear in the DNA supplement, Just Before Monday.
Out of Print Editors: Indira
Chandrasekhar, Leela Levitt, Ram Sadasiv
Dipika Mukherjee
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Indu Suryanarayan
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Mathangi Subramanian
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Sowmya Aji
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Farah Ahamed
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Suresh S
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Abha Iyengar
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Trisha Bora
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Nabina Das
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Pravin Vemuri
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Meghna Pant
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bhavani
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Kanchana Doraiswamy
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Zui Kumar-Reddy
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Devika Rajan
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Tanuj Solanki
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Prashila Naik
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