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Local author Millar wins top literary prize
By Joel Julien
Story Created: May 31, 2013 at 10:01 PM ECT
Story Updated: May 31, 2013 at 11:33 PM ECT
“TRUST your voice and write what you know, even if you think no one will be interested. Believe me, they will be.”
This was the advice local author Sharon Millar had for young writers still hesitant to reveal their works when she sat down with Express reporter Sateesh Maharaj for an interview published two Sundays ago.
The Commonwealth Short Story judging panel yesterday showed their interest in Millar’s short story, “The Whale House”, by naming her co-winner of the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
The announcement was made yesterday at the annual Hay Festival of Literature & Arts in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales, United Kingdom.
Lisa O’Donnell, UK, won the overall 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize with her book, The Death of Bees, published by Random House. Millar and fellow winner Eliza Robertson of Canada were presented with the prize by British author John le Carré.
The winner of the Commonwealth Book Prize receives £10,000 ($98,000) while the prize for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize is £5,000 ($49,000).
In 1997, Trinidad and Tobago novelist Earl Lovelace won the overall book prize with Salt. Fellow Trinidadian Barbara Jenkins has also been a previous winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
It has so far been an outstanding year for Millar.
She was named the 2013 Caribbean Region winner of the Commonwealth and her short story, “The Whale House”, was published earlier this week in Granta online.
Millar was recently short-listed for the 2013 Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize, sponsored by the Hollick Family Charitable Trust and Arvon, in association with the Bocas Lit Fest.
She was also a New Talent Showcase author at the 2012 NGC Bocas Lit Fest.
Millar was short-listed for the regional prize last year but the title was won by Jamaican author Diana McCaulay for work, “The Dolphin Catcher”.
During her interview with the Express, Millar gave a synopsis of her winning entry:
“As a woman recovers from a miscarriage, an old conflict and a long kept secret are resurrected. Bush medicine, teenage sexuality and difficult moral choices culminate in this uniquely Trinidadian story—one of marriage and the secrets we keep from the ones closest to us.”
The Commonwealth Short Story judging panel was chaired by BBC journalist Razia Iqbal and included literary agent Elise Dillsworth, a fiction judge for the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize, and writer Oonya Kempadoo, a 2013 NGC Bocas Lit Fest author.
In a statement on behalf of the judges, Iqbal said: “It is a measure of the quality we had to choose from in the short-list that we unanimously settled on two joint winners. It was impossible to decide between them, though each one is quite distinctly different from the other. Both fulfilled our criteria of excellence in style, originality and tone.”
“Both these stories stay in the imagination and the heart long after they have been read,” Iqbal stated.
