Published in Overland Issue 217 Summer 2014 · Writing Story Wine Prize: judges’ report Paddy OReilly It was the great pleasure of the judges (Campbell Mattinson, Clare Strahan and me) to read through the 400 submissions for the Overland Story Wine Prize, whittling down the excellent offerings to our top twelve, and rereading those a number of times to determine the winner and runners-up. Each judge was impressed with the diversity, cleverness and pathos of the submissions. The shortlist was made up of stories that varied widely in style, tone and length, and we debated vigorously on the way to select the top three. One of the strengths of the short story form is its ability to accommodate experimentation and risk while providing a satisfying reading experience; this strength also makes judging one story against another a difficult task. Some stories impressed with their fresh voice and vivid storytelling, others with their subtlety and poignancy, and still others with their ability to deal with difficult themes in a new and satisfying way. Our unanimous choice as winner, ‘That inward eye’, is a joyous celebration of the inner life – observation, memory and a profound appreciation of beauty intertwined in a technically impressive single sentence of 585 words. It is a story that will reward multiple readings. First place: ‘That inward eye’, by Leah Swann Runner-up: ‘I thought maybe I could be a lounge singer’, by Lauren Aimee Curtis Runner-up: ‘6pm Saturday night’, by Sally Breen Paddy OReilly Paddy O’Reilly has published three novels and two collections of short stories. Her latest collection is Peripheral Vision (UQP). More by Paddy OReilly Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays First published in Overland Issue 228 23 February 202324 February 2023 · Writing From work to text, and back again: ChatGPT and the (new) death of the author Rob Horning Generative models extinguish the dream that Barthes’s Death of the Author articulates by fulfilling it. Their ‘tissue of signs’ seems less like revolution and more like the fear that AI will create a recursive postmodern nightmare world of perpetual sameness that we will all accept because we no longer remember otherwise or how to create an alternative. 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 9 February 202310 February 2023 · Writing Please like, follow and subscribe: the pathos of Patreon Scott Robinson Every Substack page contains a glowing white box just waiting for your email address. This becomes, unavoidably, part of the work being produced. What began as a way to fund work and bring existing ideas into fruition is funnelled by hungry platforms towards an engine of content production that demands we churn out words in structurally-required scripturience. None of this is to denigrate the work of writers, artists and creators supported by such platforms. My point is that we should try and understand the effect these platforms have on the work they claim to enable.
