The BWW Short Story Award Shortlisted Entries: An Introduction
Bhumika Anand
The best short stories offer a unique insight of the world and its people, while also capturing the cultural and societal concerns of a particular time and place. This is what we want to celebrate through the BWW Short Story Award. The award is also our attempt to nurture new writing voices, particularly in short fiction, and in English.
The plaque, called the R K Anand Prize, is a memorial tribute to a simple, artistic man whose worldview was always tinged with kindness, empathy, and joy. We are using his only surviving artwork for the plaque.
In 2024, our first year, we received 174 entries. Our process to pick the winner included two blind reads (reading without knowing who the author was). Once the longlist was created, the team at Atta Galatta picked the shortlist. The jury members then read the eight shortlisted entries and picked a winner.
We are delighted to post the seven shortlisted entries here on the Out of Print blog, because all these stories are so well-written and deal with important topics. It’s an unexpected delight that all our shortlisted authors ended up being women writers, and four of them are BWW alumni.
As Saikat Majumdar, Professor of English and Creative Writing at Ashoka University, the author of five novels, most recently, The Remains of the Body, and our jury member said, ‘The women writers in the list wrote about everyday life, and they had interesting takes on life. These stories resonated with me. I loved the story, ‘Cold to Touch’ by Sumanya Velamur, with this abiding question, ‘Are white people cold to touch?’ It seems nonsensical but it’s very interesting and explained wonderfully in the story.’
The next story was a nod at the Grecian myth – ‘The Fall of Icarus’ by Anannya Nath, that deals with teaching, a professor, and the possibilities around rank and privilege.
‘Mat’ by Anjani Raj, is a story of rebel feminism of a young girl. What’s interesting about this is that the feminism seems to be equally directly against women. It brings about how patriarchy is not necessarily about men and women; it’s an ideology, and women can be just as much agents of patriarchy, as men. It shows how miserable this equation can be.
‘Of Bala and Me’ by Bashari Chakraborti, is a striking story of a woman in a marriage that the husband’s family does not acknowledge, and gets him married to a young girl of a different social class, and the relationship of the woman with the second wife, who is almost like a servant to her. It’s very erotically tense and also very profound at the same time.
‘Reflection’ by Aditi Chandrasekar, is a story about quotidian life, something very personal, and two roommates and how their lives mirror each other. One of them has a boyfriend and the intimacy shared in close quarters. I really enjoyed this story.
‘Repast’ by Nayana Ravishankar, is the story about community, cooking, and women. It’s a very sensory story around Mysore Pak, teasing even our olfactory senses as we read it. I really enjoyed this story.’
Salini Vineeth’s, ‘The Diamond Needle’, is our special mention story of the competition.
Jahnavi Barua, an Indian writer based in Bangalore, author of Next Door, Rebirth, Undertow, and short fiction that has been widely anthologised and our jury member, said, ‘When I read a short story what makes it for me is if I am moved at the end of reading it. It’s a deep emotional connection through fiction. And beyond that it’s about structure and craft. It’s hard to get a short story right. You arrive at a short story not just with knowledge of craft; you have to live life to write it. What’s hard to get right in a short story is authenticity.
I must say I enjoyed ‘The Diamond Needle’ the most. It was emotionally satisfying, and at the craft level, it felt very authentic. It was set in Kerala and had a distinct flavour of Kerala. As Indian writers writing in English, we have a big task. We are already in the place of translators because we are writing characters who are speaking in Gujrati or Malayalam and we don’t want the readers to find it awkward. So Salini has got this right. It’s not done to make it exotic, but the Malayalam inflection is needed. The old man, and the way the migrant walks into his life, and the shocking ending written in the assured manner that it was, I really enjoyed that.’
And we hope, you, our readers, enjoy these stories too. If they make you glimpse a new world, or reaffirm or question existing worldviews, then all our writers have indeed won. It’s a gratifying honour for us to be able to bring this to you.
Happy reading!
Warmly,
Bhumika Anand
Founder and Director,
Bangalore Writers Workshop (BWW)
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