A Stranded Summer

Our annual Summer Fiction contest hits the beach

This year’s submissions cover an impressive range of genres, from science fiction and magical realism, to apocalyptic and horror. They feature space stations and floods, ship wrecks and ghosts. This is, of course, my way of tipping my hat to all 34 submissions—and to thank you for introducing me to fictional versions of Don Cherry (yep, Grapes himself), David Suzuki, Margaret Atwood, Yann Martel, Avril Lavigne, William Shatner, Pamela Anderson and Bill Vander Zalm, among many others. I met movie stars, politicians, musicians and writers—all of them washing up on beaches from the South Pacific to our very own Gulf Islands. Again, a tip of the hat.

The winners—Dave Wilson’s Son of the Beach, Diane McNally’s Drawing Margaret Atwood and Marc Sira’s Hand Jive, with an honourable mention to Flotsam and Jetsam by Mark S. Hawkes—managed to create self-contained narratives within the word count. They pulled off the impressive feat of drawing me into a scene or scenario without burdening me with too much back story, and they created lively characters that asked all the right questions. And, of course, the language in each of these submissions is excellent—full of well-crafted sentences and images that caught me off guard. The stories are compelling, full of humour and simply demand to be read again and again. A hotel star-ranking system for an island of ghosts, a ridiculously chipper environmental scientist, and a well and truly pissed off Captain Kirk all caught my attention. In the end, ranking the top four came down to hair-splitting, but I couldn’t turn my back on a story about a local writer that actually made me laugh out loud (sorry Bill). I’m not sure if it was the human skull on a stick, the magical crawdad, or the constant scheming of the fictional Mr. Gaston, but I couldn’t get this one out of my head.

Read on for our top three entries—and check next week for our honourable mention. Congratulations, and thanks to everyone who submitted. M

First place: Dave Wilson - Son of the Beach

Second pace: Diane McNally - Drawing Margaret Atwood

Third place: Marc Sira - Hand Jive

Honourable mention: Mark S. Hawes - Flotsam and Jetsam