Seen and Done

I was shortlisted for the Calvino Prize! Very gratifying (but dammit, when am I actually going to win something?). This is the competition for pieces that are in the ‘fabulist experimentalist style’ of Italo Calvino – but not merely imitative. I love Calvino, but this seems to me quite a tricky brief, and I was lucky to have some stuff that was not written for the competition but met the terms pretty well. I must admit that my fellow competitors and previous winners seem to have done a pretty good job, with pieces that are recognisably Calvinoesque without verging on pastiche.