Same Same But Different Festival 2017 Writing Contest Closing 20 December 2016

Same Same But Different presents

the 2017 Wallace Foundation Short Fiction Contest.

Entries open on 1 October 2016 for the Wallace Foundation Short Fiction Contest was first awarded in 2016, replacing a previous contest, begun in 2014 by express.

The Wallace Foundation Short Fiction Contest gives New Zealand LGBTIQ writers an opportunity to prove their creative skills and the chance to publish and publicise their work. The competition provides a safe and supportive environment for both emerging and established writers to share their stories. Other than a word limit of 1500 words there are no creative restrictions; entries might express the triumph and joy of alternate sexuality, or the pain and difficulty. They might be funny or sad, sweet or bitter, outrageous or introspective.  This longer story should allow you to develop your theme and really demonstrate your storytelling skills.  The word limit is a maximum of 1500 words and should not be exceeded.

Participation is the most valued aspect of the Wallace Foundation Short Fiction Contest. It is a competition, however, and we are blessed to be part of a kind and generous community — so the prize is fabulous!

With the support of The Wallace Foundation and GABA Trust, we are awarding  $600 cash for the winning story and $300 cash for the best writing from an emerging writer aged under 25.  Please state in your covering email if you are entering this emerging youth category. All entries will be judged for the overall contest winner.

The inaugural winner in 2016 with Lily of the Valley was Jade du Preez. The contest will be celebrated at an event at the Pah Homestead in November 2016. The winner will be announced during Same Same But Different during Auckland Pride Festival 2017.

Our judges are well known in queer literary circles and they take their duties very seriously.  They are looking for outstanding sparks of creative brilliance. This year the judges are established publisher Ian Watt, who has notably published books for Reed Publishing, HarperCollins NZ and Exisle Publishing and Aorewa McLeod who taught in the University of Auckland English Department for 37 years until her retirement. She undertook the MA in creative writing at Victoria University of Wellington in 2011. She has published as a critic, edited anthologies and published the book Who Was That Woman Anyway?. They are both thoroughly looking forward to the experience.  Their decision is final.

If the Wallace Foundation Short Fiction Contest encourages us to keep telling our unique stories the best way we can, it will have achieved its aim.

There is no specified theme for 2017. Go with your heart and share your chosen story.

2017 COMPETITION RULES

1.  Stories must be your own work, and not previously published. 

2. Stories must be original works of fiction. 

3. All stories should have relevance to the broader New Zealand LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer) community.

4.  Stories must not exceed 1500 words. Any entry over this limit will be disallowed automatically. Please include your word count at the end of your story.

5.  Stories must be emailed as attachments in Word to alternativebindings@gmail.com 

6.  All stories must be received by midnight on 20 December 2016.  Late entries will not be accepted.

7.  Please include your full name, email address and contact phone number in your submission email.

8. Please state in your covering email if you are entering your story for the award for the best writing from an emerging  writer youth category. If you are please confirm that you are aged under 25. You will still be eligible to win the Wallace Foundation Short Fiction Contest.

9. Your name must not appear in headers or footers or anywhere in your story – our judges read all stories in blissful ignorance of the writer’s identity.

10. Please give your work a name.  This helps us identify each piece.

11.  If you submit a story to the competition, you are also giving us permission to publish it, which may be online or in a printed publication.

12. The winner may be invited to read their work at our winner’s event. 

13.  You may submit more than one story.

14.  We only accept stories from writers resident or normally resident in New Zealand.

The runner up in the Wallace Arts Prize for Short Fiction 2016 is Nod Ghosh

Seven Lesbians and a Bar of Soap

I've had seven so far. Maybe more. China plinks ice into my overfull glass. The volume of liquid suggests the number is irrelevant.

I've had too much too drink, and it's long past midnight.

Red light on her cheeks, bones like porcelain, China's African dance tunes beat the air like molten syrup. She closes the ranch-slider on June night light, dark as pencil lead.

Leilani pecks China on the cheek, proprietorial. Leilani's hair is streaked with bottled sun. China's is as black as swans. I want to touch it with my lips until it squeaks.

Sugar lights a cigarette and dances to a tune in her head.

Sugar sweet petit fours and Pavlova topped with kiwi-fruit line up for attention on china dessert plates. I sip my gin and tonic; the bitter bite of quinine no stranger to my palate.

I want more.

China pours me another. The thump-thump-thump of blood somewhere near my middle ear warns me to stop. Lines of lemon decorate the starboard side of the cocktail bar. She squeezes citrus into the blackness of my glass.

"For you."

"Sweet as," I say, and she slips a slice of green fruit studded with seeds into my mouth.

Leilani pulls China away, her fingers laced through her lover's. She tugs her towards the light, away from me.

"I forgot the starter," she says. "Give me a hand." With graceless moves, Leilani assembles ceviche. Knife on board. Chop. Her finger oozes blood, telltale streaks of red on white flesh. Fennel fronds and coriander sprinkled like rags over the fish.

Fait accompli. Bon appétit.

But it's too late. Leilani is too late.

Fait accompli.

Teri's netball-toned leg protrudes from a dog-brown blanket on the sofa.

"Where's Helen?" she asks, her waking voice is treacle thick. She waves away the dish Leilani offers.

Maxine and Sugar refuse the fish too. Their teeth skitter like tambourines. A smattering of dust under noses tells a story they're not ready to share.

The ceviche is untouched.

It's definitely too late.

Sugar changes the music. The singer's dusty tones match the frisson of want in the air. Does Sugar know what's happening? She dances with Maxine's head on her shoulder. They rotate like twin engines.

"Did anyone see Helen?" Teri asks again, delirious with sleep. A line of women, shoes on, shoes off, locate the buzz from the bedroom, like rats in a Skinner box.

The hum of Helen's Lelo crescendoes in ursine waves. Her cries sound like fur between teeth.

"Who's she with?" Teri growls. Leilani checks for China's presence, accounted for by virtue of a hand in hers. We count the line of women with our eyes. We count ourselves. Teri, Leilani, China, Sugar, Maxine and me.

"She's on her own," Maxine smiles, her teeth white against her skin, dark as Africa. We tiptoe away.

"Hey! The spa-pool! Let's go in." Teri's bright demeanor brought on to mask her embarrassment. En route, we drop clothes, black, red and party-white, discarded like spent weapons. We jump into the pool, watch its level rise. The cycle of lights, yellow, lime, emerald, cornflower, violet, red like disaster, orange, kōwhai yellow and back to the colour of fruit China pushed into my lips.

Helen appears, her face oval with satisfaction. She slops into the pool.

China wears designer lingerie, like she knew this was going to happen. I stare at the delicate ridge of her collarbone and hope the transparency of my desire is smothered by splashes and inattention. The jets roar into action and a head of foam builds like packaging against the sides of the tub. It accumulates between seven bodies, glistening like fish, cubes of fish in a box. It expands until there is no watery meniscus. The cold kiss of night air makes no impact on warm bodies.

The foam grows.

"Did someone put soap in here?" Leilani hisses. "Turn the jets off." A wall of froth threatens to suffocate us. Sugar's fingers slip on the controls. The lights go out. A rabbit's tail of suds climbs towards my nose. I think China winks at me through tufts of foam, though it's hard to tell in the dark.

There's a splash. Leilani screams. And in the tangle of limbs that ensues, the serpentine curl of fingers in mine assures me I have not imagined tonight.

China's eyes lock on mine as she squeezes my hand.

 And the foam climbs, until it tips out in ermine waves.

The Winner of the Wallace Arts Trust Prize for Short Fiction 2016 is Jade du Preez with Lily of the Valley

Koro was eleven when he lost his words. Not Lost. That sounds forgetful. His words were taken.

V said, “That happened to a generation – “

I said, “Like I care about “a generation.”

I said, “What kind of a name is V anyway?”

Guess I got a bit happy on the bourbon. Didn’t usually talk to randoms.

V curled her mouth like she’d been waiting to be asked.

 “A dirty one,” she said.

She looked over the top of her paper cup like she reckoned she was actually in a movie or something. Like she had a crystal glass that caught the light of the hotel chandelier and she’d just admitted to being a double agent. Like she wasn’t actually at stupid Kingi’s stupid graduation, half in the dark, on a lawn turfed up by cars, accompanied by a sound system from the nineties playing songs from the eighties.

“Great,” I said, flat as I could, “You can explain it to the guy over there,” I nodded to a flat-peak leaning on a Corolla, “been checking you out long enough.”

“Him?” She looked over serenely, “Nah. He asked me to ask you.”

“Eh?” I stared so he noticed. He was nervous. Laughed with his shoulders. “Why?”

V grinned, “Probably ‘cause he doesn’t know you’re a homo.”

“I’m not.” I sighed. This was the softball thing again.

“Pity,” V said, then – even though I never asked – “My name is Lily.”

Was she joking? There was pretty much nothing lily-like about her. Not silent. Not lily-livered. Definitely not white.

“It was updated to Lily of the Valley – get it?”

“Ha - yeah. Funny.” I didn’t get it. But that was none of her business.

“V is faster to say. Easier to yell.”

She raised her eyebrows. Closed her eyes. Could’ve been in a movie, I forget which one.

Turned out she was studying languages. A linguist. She had a research project. She wanted to speak to my Koro. Yeah, fine. Not my business.

She came over four days after. She had a laptop and flash glasses.

Away from that crowd she spoke differently; softly. She pulled out and threaded her sentences. Throw her any line and she’d weave it into her long-winded odyssey of history and policy. It turned out her name was a kind of homo joke.

My Koro liked her.

She came over again. Then again. Sometimes it was just me at home. Then it seemed like we weren’t starting new meetings, just that there were some interruptions in one long one.

I called her Lily. I wanted to keep a secret part of her. She wasn’t a lily like one of those wild monster ones that crowd out the compost. She was more like one of those bursting ones from the shops. All kinds of colours, bright-smelling, dropping pollen all over the rug. Lingering.

She’d come back from uni and release her latest phrases; all the sad German ones, all the stubborn French ones.

She said I love you in eleven languages.

Three of them had no words.

She retold the story of my Koro. She shuffled through photographs and found a likeness in me.

“The way of his lip,” Lily said, “He’s resisting a fight. You do that.”

“I’m not a chicken,” I said.

“Come away with me,” she said.

She won a scholarship. She was that smart. She was going south.

Then everything went south. Koro was given a few months max. I didn’t tell Lily, just cancelled our meetings. Koro wasn’t up to much, I’d say, really tired today. Wasn’t her business anymore. I didn’t want too many people poking around anyway. Full on sorting out the meds, food, dressing. She didn’t need to see that.

It was fast. First he stopped speaking. Then seeing. Then he was just the pair of lungs in my grandfather’s body in the hospice.

I lost my words. I hated all those ones from “kind” people. For the best; put to rest; so impressed; blessed; lest.

Less, I thought. That is all that comes.

No more I love youse.

Lily came up. Sprung from nowhere. Someone must’ve told her. Wasn’t their business, but I let it go. I didn’t say much to her. Watched the spot on the ground where her roots would’ve if she’d been true to her name.

When we were alone she read me her research. Put him in the story. I didn’t mind that.

                “How does it finish?”

                “It doesn’t,” she said.

The 2016 Pride Writing Seminar

Are you a budding LGBTQA writer? Would you like to learn more about writing?

Whether you are a complete beginner or a published author, the 2016 Pride Writing

seminar will challenge you to improve your craft.

This free two-and-a-half-hour creative workshop will feature presentations and hands-

on writing exercises from author Lisa Williams, Brendaniel Weir, Lynn Roberts and

Michael Owen.

Novels, short stories, memoirs, blogs, fan-fiction, poetry, screen-plays, journalistic

writing; no matter what you like to write, this seminar is designed to get your creative

juices flowing.


Thanks to the generosity of the Waitemata Local Board, AUT, and

GABA. The first 10 people to register for the seminar will have the opportunity to

receive a one-on-one professional critique on a sample of their work.


This is an open event, so you can just turn up. The room will be open from 5.30pm, so

come early, make a coffee and have a chat.  However, if you are interested in a free

critique and feedback session, please pre-register by emailing Brendan Weir on

brendanielwere@gmail.com.

Date: Thursday 11th February

Time: 6pm - 8.30pm

Where:   Room WT-1211, AUT Tower, cnr Rutland & Queen Street.

* Free tea and coffee and light refreshments will be provided.


About our presenters:

Lisa Williams has been writing for 25 years. She has written in fiction and non-fiction

genres, including working as a free-lance journalist. In 2004 her manuscript Death on

a Cold Winter's Night was shortlisted for the Richard Webster Popular Fiction Award

and in 2003 her novel Drifting at the Bottom of the World was a finalist for the Violet

Quill Award.


Brendaniel Weir wrote and presented the music Edu-tainment series, The Keyboard

Teacher and has been on the writing team for various Kids-Tv series. In 2002, he

worked as the executive editor for Portal, the NZ magazine of speculative fiction and

in 2013 he won the School of Language and Culture Postgraduate Award for

academic achievement for his screenplay-novel, Tane's War. Since 2013, Brendaniel

has been teaching at AUT.


Lynn Roberts has thirty years experience as journalistic writer and editor, both in New

Zealand and in the United Kingdom. Most recently she was the Lifestyle editor for

New Idea magazine and she is currently writing a full-length stageplay.

Michael Owen is a poet who uses poetry and the written word as part of an holistic

approach to therapy. He has had a long career in the healing arts and is a qualified

Shen therapist.  Michael is currently working on compiling and editing a New

Zealand Rainbow-Poetry Anthology.

Review Revue 2016

Now in its third year Review Review is presented by Auckland Libraries and Alternative Bindings at the Central Library on Wednesday 10th February. 

An eclectic group of Rainbow reviewers will present a 7 minute speed review of LGBTIQFT focused, very broadly defined,‘literature'.

The evening will run from 5.30pm, with a start at 6 pm. There will be 7 or 8 reviewers,with Michael Giacon MC-ing and  and keeping very strict timing! 

“Wallace Arts Trust Prize” short fiction contest 2016

This year's winner of the Wallace Arts Trust Prize for best short story is Jade du Preez with "Lily of the Valley".  Jade du Preez is an artist, currently studying for a law degree with a view to a career in human rights. http://www.jadedupreez.com/

The runner up in the Wallace Arts Trust Prize for short fiction is Nod Ghosh with "seven Lesbians and a Bar of  Soap". Nod Ghosh is a medical laboratory scientist in Christchurch and has had stories accepted by in various NZ and international publications.. Nod's maxim: Writers are like humans, but they watch less television. http://www.nodghosh.com/

The competition provides a safe and supportive environment for both emerging and established writers to share their stories. Other than a set length of 750 words and a theme "A Kiwi Romance", there are no restrictions; entries might express the triumph and joy of alternate sexuality, or the pain and difficulty. They might be funny or sad, sweet or bitter, outrageous or introspective. 

With the support of The Wallace Foundation, GABA Trust and Gaynz.com, we are awarding  $600 cash and publication on Gaynz.com for the winning story and $300 cash for the runner up.

The Prizes will be presented during Same Same But Different, a LGBTQI literary festival taking place during Pride on 13 February 2016 at AUT.

Jade will read her winning piece join a panel at the session Now & Then - featuring well established writers and new voices.

Poetry Meet Pride 2016

Tuesday 9 February sees us return to the secret garden at Ley's Institute Library in St Mary's Bay. Share poetry with others of a LGBTQI bent in a safe and supportive space.

From 6.00 pm on Tuesday 9 February we meet together and share a teacup  of wine or juice. Then our maestro, Michael Giacon, will assist us in conjuring a spontaneous sharing of poetry and inspiration. A secure and nurturing space to share your poetry. See you there! BYO tea cup.