Looking back over all the palaver this competition has created, I can say that I
have learned at least one thing: People are very interested in, and concerned
about, gender issues in writing and publishing! I think it's created more waves
- and more work! - than any other competition we've run, which is odd, as
relatively few people risked entering it. (And they were of a very high standard with, in my view, forty stories that deserved to be in the top
ten.)
Clearly, the entrants were all skilled writers with a strong interest in the
Gender Challenge. But, because of those gender issues, we found people had
strong views about what kind of stories were acceptable and how they should be
judged, about whether the identity of judges should be revealed, whether
biographical info - authors' and judges' - should include photos - all sorts of
issues were far hotter than they normally are during competition administration.
So once again, praise and respect to the writers who were game for the
challenge, and the judges who had the courage to put their gut reactions
on a web page and wait for the world to judge them!
I've had quite a few debates with people involved in the industry in various ways about the likely outcome and, whilst they were interesting, I was aware that most of the opinions debated were based on guesswork. - Do men or women write or read certain things because that's what they want, or because the structure of society leads them that way? Hard to say. The only piece of hard evidence I've come across lately is the result of a 'readers' reviews' project in a national newspaper. It was pointed out to me that female readers had recommended a range of books by male and female writers, but a large majority of male readers had recommended books by male writers. So, seeing the difficulty our Gender Genre judges had deciding on the gender of our writers - and figuring out how they'd decided - all that I've definitely learned is this: Some men think they prefer books by men, but they probably wouldn't know which were which if they hadn't been told!
As well as the judges' views, we received quite a 'postbag' of emailed comments from other entrants and general readers. Of these, the guesses about the gender of the writers were many and varied and the overall favourite story was 'Cubhunting', which most thought was written by a man. Ah well, it just goes to show.... ?
(Oh, and a quick 'mea culpa' - may I assure everyone, the formatting of texts was not a factor in the choice of winners, especially in the last round where any faults were likely to be due to my throwing them onto web pages at high speed whilst carrying on multiple email discussions about gender issues and how we should present our results page!)
Kit Habianic author of A Yellow Daisy
Ha - I love the judge who thought I was a man trying too hard to be female. I once did one of those online are-you-male/female-brain tests, which concluded that I was 67% male-brained. My friends say I'm a gay man (of the Streisand-worshipping, Hi-NRG-dancing old school) trapped in a woman's body! My conclusion? To quote the immortal Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show - I'm just a sweet transvestite! Well done to the three winners. And thanks to the judges for saying such nice things about all of us. K
William Wood author of The Wave
I have been reading the judges remarks with interest. I have no quarrel with the results but it amuses me how wide of the mark a reader or a judge can be (from the author's point of view) in their interpretation of a story or a poem...the reason one writes a story does not necessary make that the reason why a reader likes or dislikes it. So here is a little secret: The Wave was a little therapeutic exercise written over 20 years ago when I lost my children during a divorce. Those children are now grown up and have children of their own and we are all the best of friends. I came across the manuscript by chance and as it was unpublished and short enough I entered it...The age of the story and its inspiration is quite irrelevant of course. As Oscar Wilde said, only the mediocre develop!
Val Ishii (competition judge)
Lost and Found - I did think this was female too. I'm less surprised to find that I'm wrong on this score than to find it's authored by the same person as hi from cassandra - which I disliked as much as I liked Lost and Found!
David-John Tyrer (competition judge)
As I thought, my guesses (where I felt able to make them) about gender were mostly wrong! (Amusing that the one author who had two stories in there made me think he was male for the one and female for the other.) Just goes to prove that you generally can't tell. I hope it inspires more people to write what they WANT to write rather than feeling hemmed in by stereotypes - and for readers to read what they enjoy not what they think they should enjoy.
All in all, a good result!
Jane Hayward author of Stiff Upper Lip
Many thanks for the chance to take part in this. What interesting comments from the judges - one of whom did not have his maths correct as far as my Stiff Upper Lip was concerned - the Iraq war was in 2003 - 5 years ago so a serving soldier would be around 20 + so a parent could be anything from 40 - 55, as I was then. I will look forward to competing in further comps as very good value in every way for £5!
(Jane added later that, on reflection, she may well change the character from father to grandfather as the bond between grandfather and grandson may be closer.)
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