CVC Anthology Book Three

The finalists from our national short fiction competition that awards $10,000 to the best story by an Emerging Writer, and $5,000 to a Writer at Any Career Point. Gloria Vanderbilt sponsors and judges this Canadian-only Short Fiction Prize. An anthology featuring the best of today’s short fiction. The 12 shortlisted from the hundreds of entries are presented in Volume Three of the CVC Short Fiction Anthology Series, a special book published in memory of Carter V. Cooper, the son of Ms Gloria Vanderbilt.

Of the winners, Ms Vanderbilt had this to say: Sang Kim’s “When John Lennon Died” takes the Emerging prize with a story about loss. Loss as defined by the Welsh word “hiraeth” a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past. It is told with courage and restraint making it all the more powerful. A brilliant debut. “Cover Before Striking” by Priscila Uppal shares the Writer at Any Career Point prize: my heart raced with anger and fear as I read. At moments I was afraid to continue, but so beautifully crafted–original, disturbing, poetic–it pulled me on. And Austin Clarke’s “They Never Told Me” is a mesmerizing, haunting story that springs with life from the page to reach the deepest places in the mind and heart. A story we will not forget.

Contents: Sang Kim “When John Lennon Died” • George McWhirter “Tennis” • David Somers “Punchy Sells Out” • Leon Rooke “Conditional Sphere of Everyday Historical Life” • Helen Marshall “Lessons in the Raising of Household Objects” • Priscila Uppal “Cover Before Striking” • Yakos Spiliotopoulos “Black Sheep” • Greg Hollingshead “Mother/Son” • Matthew R. Loney “A Fire in the Clearing” • Rob Peters “Sam’s House” • Liz Windhorst Harmer “Teaching Strategies” • Austin Clarke “They Never Told Me”