Today we have a guest post from May-Kuan Lim, introducing the 2019 Stories of Life competition for Australian narrative non-fiction writers.
But first, a reminder: entries for the 2019 CALEB Award from Omega Writers are now open. Click here to find out more and enter.
And we’re looking for readers to judge! Click here to find out more and sign up to judge the 2019 CALEB Award.
Now, let’s welcome May-Kuan and find out about Stories of Life!
The Stories of Life writing competition:
A groundswell that points to the author of life
As a young engineer, I was sent to Darmstadt, Germany, for training. One weekend, my colleagues and I drove to nearby Munich for some sightseeing. In that city of grand and imposing buildings, we came across an exhibition of religious relics. I was the only Christian in the group and my colleagues urged me to pay the admission fee and go in.
I stepped through a doorway into a low-ceilinged windowless room. Shuffling along with the crowd, I peered at objects inside glass cases. Weak blue-grey light illuminated various objects, including a shroud, a shard of bone, a cup, and two small coffins. I think they were for Christian children who had died in the Roman catacombs.
Even today, almost twenty years later, whenever I think back to that room, the words of the angels come to mind:
‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!’
On that first Easter morning, did the women silently wonder: where then is he?
Last month, at my church camp, I sat down for lunch with a young mother who had recently migrated to Australia. She told me how she and her husband had paid the equivalent of AUD25,000 to keep her second child instead of aborting him as government policy at the time prescribed. When the child was a little older, her boss threatened to sack her if she asked for time off again to care for her sick child, despite her having sufficient annual leave.
Apart from these personal and professional pressures, officials closed down her church. But this only underscored the value of Christian fellowship to the congregants, causing them to find sacrificial and creative ways to continue meeting. As I listened, I wiped away several tears, especially when her two children came to our table. The young mother’s story was full of human pain, but the measure of pain seemed to magnify God’s providence.
It is this same renewed awareness of God’s active presence that I experience when I read stories of life.
Stories of Life is a writing competition that began in 2016.
The aim was to make more stories of faith and testimony available to the community. A veteran radio host, a creative writing lecturer, and an editor got together to design the competition. Since then, Stories of Life has grown in reach and clarity of vision:
- To equip Christians to tell their stories well
- To provide platforms for these stories to be published
The categories are:
- Tabor Open Stories of Life (1000 to 1500 words, $10 entry fee)
- Eternity Matters Short Stories of Life (up to 500 words, $10 entry fee)
- Lutheran Education Young Stories of Life (500 – 1000 words, free for writers aged 17 and under)
All submissions are shortlisted and judged as anonymous entries.
The genre is narrative non-fiction: the stories are all true, but writers may draw from the full range of literary devices. The aim, however, is not to manufacture suspense and drama. Rather it is to allow the reader to vicariously experience the active presence of God.
It is amazing that such short stories can be so evocative. Reading through the 2018 anthology, Three Dummies in Dinghy, I felt so many different emotions: the treachery of questioning if God could really have a purpose in Parkinson’s, despair from transferred from one foster home to another, deep gratitude for God’s valentine gift to a lonely girl – a carpet of pink and gold frangipani flowers.
The stories are varied, as the endings are unpredictable. You know that God is going to do or say something, but you don’t know what or how, and so you keep reading to the very end.
Submissions are accepted online from 1 April to 31 July.
Writing and editing workshops are held and writing resources are published to support writers crafting their stories. Winners are announced at the book launch in early November. All contributors to the anthology also receive a 40% discount code, which is valid for one month.
Over summer, LifeFM in Adelaide broadcasts some of the stories. We then upload these audio files to our website, publish backstories and promote the writing successes of our contributors throughout the year.
In this way, we build up a picture for the church and the community that God is alive and active today. Every story of God at work among his people contributes to narrative that God is not among the dead, but among the living.
Hi May-Kuan, Welcome to ACW & thank you for sharing Stories of Life with us. 🙂