Author: Peter

I'm a retired civil servant in Surrey, UK and long-time blogger. These days I'm spending more time writing stories and doing other creative stuff

Dr Semmelweis

July 19, 2023

This play, starring and partly written by Mark Rylance, tells the story of how Dr Ignaz Semmelweis discovered that fatal puerperal fever could be almost eliminated just by getting doctors to wash their hands. This radical innovation was not accepted by the profession (and the play makes clear that Semmelweis was, well, somewhat lacking in diplomacy, which didn’t help) and the doctor himself, whose behaviour became increasingly unacceptable, died in a lunatic asylum.

It’s a great production, which includes a group of women who play violins and dance around or with the actors. That sounds weird, but it mostly works, only seeming intrusive a couple of times.

It seems odd now that the simple notion of bacterial infection should have been so difficult to grasp. Part of the problem was that Semmelweis had only sketchy, inaccurate ideas about the mechanism: he just knew, and demonstrated, that washing worked. Sadly it was a long time before the practice was universally accepted.

August 2023 competitions

July 17, 2023

Here’s my regular look at writing competitions I might enter during the coming month.. 

  • The Scottish Association of Writers has the Westerwood competition for stories of 2-3,000 words. Entry is £7 with a parsimonious prize of £100. The deadline is 5 August.
  • Uncharted Magazine wants 1,001 to 5,000 words. Entry is $20 and the prize a more generous $2,000. Stories must be on the theme ‘The Aftermath’, and in one of the three genres they publish: SF/F, Thriller/Horror and Mystery/Crime. The deadline is 6 August.
  • Gival’s regular contest is with us again: 5-15,000 words, entry $25, top prize $1,000, enter by 8 August.
  • Periscope wants briefer stories, up to 1,500 words, on the theme ‘Identity’. £10 entry, first prize £1,000 and the deadline is 15 August.
  • Louise Walters is back with the competition based on page 100 of your novel. It’s £5 to enter: no money prize but a full editorial report and a box of books. Deadline 20 August.
  • The Summer version of the Masters Review competition is back – up to 6,000 words, $20 to enter and a prize of $3,000. The deadline is 27 August.

All the rest have a deadline of 31 August.

  • Creative Writing Ink wants up to 3,000 words, entry is £9 and the prize £1,000.
  • Bit of a fanfare for the University of New Orleans’s Publishing Laboratory, who are offering a prize of $10,000 plus publication. For that they want a full-length novel or collection (no word or page limit) and an entry fee of $28.
  • On a more modest scale, Anthology wants a maximum of 1,500 words, for an entry fee of £18 and a prize of £1,000.
  • Letter Review looks for up to 5,000 words. Your £20 entry fee gets you access to a £1,000 prize pot to be split three ways – so £333.33, I suppose.
  • Aesthetica Magazine puzzles me slightly, because it seems to be an avant-garde publication about art and design rather than a literary one. But the competition claims former winners have gone on to great success. It’s £18 to enter, with a prize of £2,500. Up to 2,000 words. 
  • The Kenneth Patchen award is for an innnovative, experimental novel of any length. $25 to enter, win $1,000 and publication.
  • St Lawrence look for a collection of 120-280 pages. $28 gets you a shot at $1,000.

Good luck if you enter any of these, and do let me know if you get anywhere!

Karen McLeod

July 11, 2023

Interesting talk from Karen McLeod at Croydon Writers last night. For a long time she worked as cabin crew for an airline, but managed to write a novel In Search of the Missing Eyelash which was published and did very well. Then she found it was hard to write the follow-up her agent pressed her for.
Instead she developed a comedy act based on the character Barabara Brownskirt, the laureate of Penge, which she still performs. But, having parted company with her agent, she is now writer in residence at the Bookseller Crow Bookshop and has a memoir of her flying days coming out next year.

Picasso

June 23, 2023

To mark the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death, the Musée National Picasso-Paris commissioned Sir Paul Smith to direct a special exhibition, which selects works from their huge collection. We went over to see it.

Many of the pictures have been hung on walls specially decorated with bold motifs taken from the painting itself: I’m afraid this mostly just seems like a distraction. But it is an astonishing collection of works.

There is a connection here with Degas. Picasso admired his stuff and produced a series of works inspired by Le déjeuner sur l’herbe.

The exhibition presents this final picture of the young artist, done in Picasso’s last year, as his cheerful farewell.

Manet/Degas

June 22, 2023

In Paris to see the exhibition of Manet and Degas at the Musée D’Orsay.

This follows well from the Morisot exhibition and indeed includes many portraits of her by Manet…

The exhibition explores the relationship between Degas and Manet, who according to legend met while copying the same painting in the Louvre. Both were from fairly well-off families who intended them for other careers, both served as soldiers in Paris, and both (in different ways) had a complex relationship with Impressionism. Manet, however, was sociable and had a lively romantic life, while Degas was solitary, easy to quarrel with, and quite probably never had sex with anyone. After Manet’s death Degas collected many of his painting and gathered together the surviving fragments of The Execution of Emperor Maximilian.

Some of my pictures seem to have got deleted, but here are some random highlights.

The exhibition is constructed to make a point, and does not include some of the famous works by both artists that are actually on display just upstairs in another part of the gallery!

July 2023 Competitions

June 19, 2023

Here’s my regular look at writing competitions I might enter during the coming month (so no poetry or competitions that arenot open to UK writers, for example).

  • Leicester Writes wants up to 3,500 words, with an entry fee of £7.00 and a prize of £175. The deadline is 2 July.
  • Liminisa offers a week’s writing holiday at their retreat in Greece: entry is free, but you must follow them on social media. The maximum word count  is 1,500 and the theme is ‘A Room of One’s Own’, Deadline 2 July.
  • Story Quarterly (from Rutgers) will take pieces up to 6,250 words: entry is $15 and the top prize £500. The deadline is 9 July.
  • The H.G.Wells competition is back, with a theme of ‘Motion’. Up to 5,000 words, with a deadline of 10 July. The top prize is £1,000, while entry is £10.
  • Wrekin Writers are again running the Doris Gooderson competition, with a deadline of 12 July. They want up to 1,200 words, entry is £5 and the top prize is £200: at least half the funds raised will go to the Severn Hospice.
  • Hastings Book Festival has a word limit of 2,500, and entry fee of £7.50 and a prize of £250: deadline 14 July.
  • LISP wants up to 3,000, with a deadline of 15 July.  Prizes have been shrinking recently, but I have to say this one does not look generous: £100 against an entry fee of £15.50. Earlier in the year, I must acknowledge, the fee would have been lower, but still – a prize that’s less than seven times the entry cost?
  • The Adrift competition from Driftwood magazine will take pieces of up to 6,000 words: entry is $11, the prize is $500 and the deadline is again 15 July.
  • With the same deadline, the Petrichor prize from Regal House looks for 100-350 pages of ‘finely crafted’ fiction. Entry is $25 and the prize $1,000.
  • Hawk Mountain looks for a book-length collection of short stories: entry is $20 and the prize $1,000 plus publication. Deadline 15 July.
  • One more with the same deadline: the Francine Ringold Award from Nimrod, open to pieces of up to 5,000 words, entry $12 and prize $500.
  • The Aurora Prize, from the writers of the East Midlands, seeks up to 2,000 words. Entry is £9 and the prize is £500 plus a year’s membership of the Society of Authors: enter by 19 July.
  • Munster Lit is back with the annual Séan Ó Faoláin competition. Entry is  €19 and the prize €2,000 plus a writing residency. The closing date is 31 July, as it is for all the remaining competitions.
  • Creative Writing Ink want 3,000 words max, with a fee of £9 and a prize of £1,000.
  • The Olga Sinclair prize, from Norwich, looks for up to 2,000 on the theme ‘The Sea’. Entry is £9 and the prize is £500.
  • The Global Novel Writing Competition is free to enter, but there is no cash prize. Instead, you get free entry on to a course at the Writers’ College. They want first chapters up to 6,000 words plus a synopsis

Good luck if you enter any of these; if you get anywhere, please do let me know!

Berthe Morisot

June 14, 2023

We went to the Berthe Morisot exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. The exhibition, nicely hung, traces influences from earlier generations of artists. These were noted at the time and Fragonard in particular was mentioned so much it led to a legend that she was literally his descendant, a false claim still widely repeated, on Wikipedia and elsewhere. The pictures don’t even look especially Fragonardish to me.

In any case, the emphasis should probably be on her innovative contribution to Impressionism. Her pictures look very fresh and modern in style, if not always in subject. Her brushwork is free and sometimes she doesn’t bother painting to the edge of the canvas. Nearly all are pictures of women, including the striking self-portrait above, in which she jokingly arranges flowers on her lapel to look like the Legion d’Honneur. She seems to have been a good subject, painted many times by her brother-in-law Manet.

Morisot and her sister Edma had the advantage of coming from a well-off family that was happy to pay for art tutors, but as women could not go to art school, and Edma gave up painting when she married. Morisot’s paintings sometimes attracted patronising comments relating to their ‘femininity’: on the other hand her works were never rejected by the Salon as other impressionist paintings were.

Worth a look.

Exeter Writers

May 28, 2023

My story ‘Dying Teddy Bears’ was longlisted in the Exeter Writers competition (but did not progress any further). It is already in a couple of other competitions, so we’ll see how it does there.

Pippi

May 28, 2023

I forgot to post my recent picture of Pippi…

This is based on a photograph, from which I made an outline drawing that I transferred to a wood block prepared with gesso, and then had at it with the acrylics. Here are the photo and drawing for comparison…

June 2023 Competitions

May 20, 2023

Here again is a look at writing competitions I might enter during the coming month (so no poetry or competitions not open to UK writers, for example – but competitions for old people are definitely in, and in fact I’ve got a couple this time…)

  • The Salamander Prize is for stories up to 30 pages. Entry is $15, top prize $1,000 and the deadline is 1 June.
  • Write by the Sea looks for up to 2,500 words, entry is €10 and the winner gets €500 plus an elegant trophy. You’ve got until 4 June.
  • The Writer’s Digest has a word limit of 4,000. Entry is $35 and the top prize is $1000 – awarded in several categories and lots of lesser prizes are awarded to good entries. The deadline is 5 June.
  • Grist is running the Imagine 2200 competition, in which they invite you to do just that, presenting a climate-fiction vision of how a greener world might be flourishing in that distant year. They want 3-5,000 words and the top prize is $3,000, but entry is free! (You can donate $50 if you want to support Grist, however). The deadline is 13 June.
  • Now one for the oldies: Stories Through the Ages, from Living Springs, is for baby boomers plus (people born in 1966 or earlier) They will accept up to 5,000 words, charge $20 and award a prize of $500 as well as publication. They are, in my experience, discerning judges. The deadline is 15 June.
  • Writefluence is back. Following competitions for stories about the imaginary character Mr Rosewood, and then Mrs Rosewood, they now want one which must be about a day in the life of both old folk, up to 3,000 words. You can imagine them however you want. No prize except publication, but then entry is only Rs. 150/-  ($2 approx). Readers of this blog have had some success with this one in the past. Enter by 15 June.
  • I don’t know much about Bardsy (any views?) but they have a first chapter competition for members. Up to 3,000 words of your novel, $20 for entry, with a prize of $1,000 and inclusion in an anthology. The deadline is 20 June.

All the rest have a deadline of 30 June.

  • WriteTime is another one for the oldies – over 60s, in this case. Only 1,500 words is required, £3 to enter and a £50 prize, so nothing for vulnerable pensioners to get over-stressed about.
  • The Wells Festival of Literature (which I really ought to visit one year) looks for up to 2,000 words: entry is £6 and the prize is £750.
  • A special tribute from me for Graham Jennings, the gent who ran the regular Henshaw competitions for many years with unfailing courtesy. It seems Graham has decided to take a well-earned rest: however the competitions continue as before under the management of Hobeck Books. Word count up to 2,000, entry £6 and top prize £200.
  • The Moth is back, looking for up to 3,000 words: entry is £15 and first prize £3,000.
  • Then we have the redoubtable Christopher Fielden’s competition To Hull and Back, for humorous pieces up to 2,500 words. Entry is £15, and besides winning £1,200 you could have your face added to the dramatic motorbike picture on the cover of the anthology, as well as your story being literally given an exciting ride to Hull (and back) on Chris’s Harley – if you haven’t read about this before, check it out. Chris’s site has useful info about other competitions and much else.
  • The Writers College generously runs a free competition for stories up to 2,000 words,  on the theme ‘Words Have Consequences’ in which you could win NZ$1,000.
  • You might also be interested in another competition from the same people, for a non-fiction essay on ‘My Writing Journey’: a maximum of 600 words in this case, and a prize of NZ$200.
  • Finally, the Katherine Ann Porter prize run by the University of North Texas looks for a collection of any kind of short fiction, from flash to novellas, that totals 100 to 200 pages or somewhere between 27,500 and 50,000 words. You can win $1,000 plus publication. The normal fee is $25, but they are running a fee-free window if you enter on 1 June (careful about time zones if you go for this). Many competitions offer free entry for people who are short of money; this is apparently intended as a different way to improve access.

I would love to hear about any successes you may have!