Announcing the winner of the 2021 AAWP/ASSF Short Story Prize
The ASSF would like to offer a huge congratulations to Clare Testoni, winner of the 2021 AAWP/ASSF Short Story Prize, awarded for her story, ‘Video Capture’.
Clare Testoni is a playwright, fiction writer, and puppeteer. Her performance practice often involves shadow puppetry and the intersection of cinema and theatre. Performed work includes Tale of Tales, The Double, The Beast and The Bride, and the children’s audio play SunRunners. Clare has trained in puppetry in Australia and Europe and recently completed an Honours in Creative Writing at The University of Western Australia. She has had short fiction published in UNSWeented and in South of The Sun: An Anthology of New Australian Fairytales. She was an artist in residence at Spare Parts Puppet Theatre in 2020.
Congratulations also go to our highly commended stories, ‘But They Sing Gloriously‘ by Angela O’Brien-Malone and ‘The Group Booking‘ by Michelle Prak
The judges were impressed with the high standard of the submissions this year. Many stories were excellent, but the judges were ultimately unanimous in their decision to award this year’s prize to ‘Video Capture’. The winning story is a very accurate portrayal of the first lonely and foggy days for a new mother stuck in a baby world that she finds difficult to navigate. Add to this the complexity of some quite creepy movements of the baby webcam and desperate online conversations and the story ends up quite unlike any other. The judges would also like to highly commend ‘But They Sing Gloriously’, which is a beautifully inventive and unusual story, and ‘The Group Booking’, a genuinely unsettling story about women’s fear. Congratulations to all three awarded writers. We are looking forward to hosting the winner at The Australian Short Story Festival in Adelaide in November 2021.
