The short story competition, which aimed at encouraging more writing in English from Nepal, was a part of a project titled The Writer in the World which is supervised by writer Samrat Upadhyay. The competition, the organizers shared, saw over 100 entries, which were solely judged by Upadhyay.
A short list of seven entries had been published earlier this week. Excerpts from all the seven entries were read during the event. [break]
Sharing his judging procedure at the award ceremony, Upadhyay said, “As the stories were passed on to me, I read the entries and weeded out those that clearly didn’t work when it comes to the level of the language. When it comes to writing in English, writers need to spend a lot of time with the language and the winning stories had a command in the English language, they were able to do something interesting with it.” Commenting that some of the entries would have been better short stories in the Nepali language, he also shared that the story and whether or not the story was saying something was also what he kept in mind while making his judgment.
While ‘The Presence of God’ by Pranaya Rana, ‘Chamomile’ by Byanjana Thapa, ‘Between Queens and the City’ by Niranjan Kunwar and ‘Dolls in a Row’ by Sarhana Shrestha received honorable mentions, Prabhat Gautam’s ‘Flames and Fables’ won the third prize, ‘Pep Talk’ by Muna Gurung won second place and ‘Let the Rain Come Down’ by Samyak was able to take the first place. The winners were awarded with Rs 2,000, Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 respectively.
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