Some Thoughts on the HSBC/SA PEN Literary Award 2005-2007

I have for some time now wanted to express my gratitude to all the organizers and facilitators of the HSBC/SA PEN Award, but more especially to Mr and Mrs Fleischer, for whom, I suspect, the Award has been not an obligation but rather more of a commitment and passion.

I have had more than two years in which to realize what the Award has meant in my life and what it has enabled me to pursue. I first became aware of the competition towards the middle of 2004. I came across the leaflets advertising it at the public library I frequent for children’s books. If I had had more time for reflection, it might, with debilitating insistence, have occurred to me that I was suppressing a gnawing anxiety: I had come from a background in literary studies, but after numerous miscarriages, two high risk (but thankfully successful pregnancies) and the demands of providing care for our two young sons, I realized that I had been outside of a professional environment for about eight years.

When I got around to reviewing my CV, I had very little to add even though the intervening years had been the most demanding and most challenging of my life. To this day I am never quite sure whether parenting has a place on one’s CV, even though raising a child well requires more patience, stamina, imagination and wisdom than other more marketable endeavours. As things were, however, I took the leaflet advertising the Award, put it in my pedestal drawer and promptly forgot about it until about a week before the deadline. In the interim, just after my younger son had started pre-school, I managed to get myself some part-time tutoring in the English Department of the University of the Western Cape. Time thus was in even more short supply. So I wrote the first story I submitted to the Award, which was the first adult creative piece I had written since high school, over three very late nights and hand delivered it to the New Africa Books office an hour before they closed on the day of the deadline. That story won third prize in 2005.

In subsequent years, my short stories have been a little better planned and rather more cerebral affairs. They, however, were only ever shortlisted, leading me to think that in future I might artfully have to stage the urgency and exhilaration of my first stab at adult fiction writing.
Although in 2006 the suggestion was made that perhaps the Award was not attracting writing of a sufficiently high standard from the Southern African writing community, I must acknowledge that if I had had the impression that it was directed at fairly established and successful writers, I would never have considered entering. Up until about two years ago (now there are simply insufficient minutes in the day) I could not help but write a few stories for my children. Whatever imagination, drama and sense of humour I lack, my sons make up for in abundance and their preoccupations and foibles simply demanded to be put on paper. I had tried to get some of these published, but unsuccessfully – so I did feel a bit fragile. Also, I had this idea that to be a fiction writer necessitated an eventful, “extreme” or Bohemian existence. My life, by contrast, has been very secure, very ordinary, but also very blessed. A background in literary criticism at university in addition had me convinced that fiction writing was the literary equivalent of walking around naked, something I’m not too comfortable with. The fact that the Award seemed directed at any Southern African with a story to tell (insistently drummed out by its slogan, “Write! Africa Write!”) even though she/he might have no literary affiliations or contacts or networks was the persuasion I needed to put pencil to paper. Writing has obliged me to realize the connections between the minutiae of existence, which is the daily round of most people, and the grand questions, which should not be the preserve of the few.

So what has the HSBC/SA PEN Literary Award meant to me then? The Award has meant that when I become anxious about “catching up”, making up for the “lost” years and feeling awkward about not being appropriately professionally positioned, I am reminded that over three years I was noticed by a very discerning panel and that in each of those three years I found myself in the highly talented company represented by the authors in the anthologies, African Compass, African Road and African Pens. It is my sincere hope that in the future other young Southern African writers might be able to enjoy the same opportunity.

Thank you.

Fiona had stories published in all three of SA Pen's publications