Dan Powell, a PhD in Creative Writing student at the University of Leicester, has won first prize in a national short story competition. He's the winner of this year’s Leicester Writes Short Story Prize.
The winning story, "Dissolution," was chosen anonymously by the judging panel, which included writers Rebecca Burns, Mark Newman and Selma Carvalho. There were over 165 entries received from across the UK.
Dan wins a cash prize and will have his story published in the prize anthology.
He said: “I am thrilled to receive first prize in the Leicester Writes Short Story Prize. As writers, we often work for long periods alone, unsure whether what we are working on will connect with people. To have a story recognised in this way always means a great deal, but in these days of social distancing it means so much more."
Dan’s winning story was created using a preclosural writing methodology developed as part of his doctoral research in Creative Writing at University of Leicester. The data from his preclosural analysis of fifteen British short stories written between 1885-1920 was used to construct a structural and linguistic writing frame to guide the writing of this story.
“My research explores the benefits of using a preclosural methodology in the writing of short fiction, both for the individual author and the writing teacher. This story’s success in the Leicester writes Short Story Prize further supports my findings that this approach can help writers of all ages and skill levels improve their craft.”
You can read more about Dan's research here.
Now in its fourth year, the short story prize is organised by city-based small press, Dahlia Publishing, and is open to published and unpublished writers, for a short story of up to 3000 words on any theme or subject.
Judges praised the exceptional quality of entries received this year. Rebecca Burns, chair of judges said: “The standard of story-writing was yet again impressive and made the job of shortlisting and picking the eventual winners a delight, challenging, and a lot of fun. I’d like to thank all the writers who sent their stories in, for trusting us with their words. We all felt that ‘Dissolution’ was a well-deserved winner – the story is poignant, beautifully paced, had great depth and pathos, and will speak to many of us during this strange time, as we try to work out which direction our lives will go in.”
Twenty short stories featured on this year’s longlist will be published in an anthology. The collection will be launched online later in the year.
The full results can be found online at www.leicesterwrites.co.uk.
About Dan Powell
Dan Powell is a prize-winning author of short fiction and First Story Writer-in-Residence. His debut collection of stories, Looking Out of Broken Windows, was shortlisted for the Scott Prize and longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Edge Hill Prize. He is currently working on his PhD as a Doctoral Researcher in Creative Writing at University of Leicester. His research explores preclosure and closural staging in short fiction. Dan can be found online at danpowellfiction.com and @danpowfiction.
By Lee Wright
On Wednesday 8th May 2019, the first ever "Dissertation Day" took place, as part of the MA in Creative Writing at Leicester. The day included workshops, presentations and roundtable discussions in which everyone shared ideas for projects. The day acted like a taster menu, featuring novels, short stories, poetry collections, non-fiction pieces, and plays.
The day opened with a guest writing workshop by Sue Dymoke, poet and Reader in Education. This was followed by a presentation by PhD Creative Writing students Dan Powell and Karen Powell, who talked about how they managed and planned long creative research projects. Finally, all the MA students sat around a table and, in turn, spent time talking about their practice, research and explaining what they were trying to achieve in their dissertations. Everyone in the group shared ideas, reading suggestions and practical advice. The lecturers on the Creative Writing programme, Jonathan Taylor, Nick Everett and Kevan Manwaring, were on hand to listen and provide an idea of how students might proceed with their dissertation projects. They recognised that sometimes you need a person to point you in a different direction and say, “Try this other way” - making you think, or see something that wasn’t necessarily clear before.
The day was an important addition to the course, based around a framework of encouragement. After all, a problem shared is a problem halved.
About the author:
Lee Wright’s short stories, articles and poetry have been published by Fairlight Books, Headstuff.com, The Black Country Arts Foundry, The New Luciad, Peeking Cat Anthology, Newmag and Burning House Press. Lee is in his final year of a part-time MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester.
By Dan Powell
Overview:
Preclosure sentences are those sentences within a story, prior to the story’s actual closing sentences where the reader feels the story could end. Preclosural method is an attempt to uncover what endings and the staging of closure can reveal about the cognitive processes experienced when reading a piece of short fiction. My research-led creative project examines how authors of short fiction employ preclosure in their work and investigates how preclosural method might inform the short story writing process.
Aims of this short research study:
- to gather preclosural sentence selection data from multiple readers of four stories
- to discover whether consensus exists between readers regarding the placement of closural sentences and the arrangement of putative stories within given stories.
As a participant in this short project, you will be asked to:
- attend an introductory lecture presentation on ‘preclosure theory’ where you will learn how preclosure theory can be used in textual analysis and as a pedagogical tool. You will discover how the data from this study will be used to help to identify closural staging in the British short story and develop frames for the writer/practitioner of short fiction.
- read four short stories (over a period of four-to-six weeks) – 'Tamagotchi' by Adam Marek; 'The Leafsweeper' by Muriel Spark; 'Markheim' by Robert Louis Stevenson; 'The Death Bed' by Amelia Opie.
- while reading each story you will be asked to identify any sentences prior to the story’s final sentence where you feel the story could end. Each sentence of each story will be numbered to facilitate a quick and easy response and you will only be required to list the number of each sentence you identify in each story on the simple response form provided.
- attend a closing presentation and discussion where the findings from your selections will be delivered. During this session you will have the opportunity to discuss the stories, your response to them, and the preclosural selections made by participants.
Attendance of the introductory session and your participation in the study will provide you with practical experience of and engagement with preclosure theory. Your participation in this project will develop and deepen your understanding of how authors structure narrative and how readers both perceive and interact with that structure. Experience of these ideas and their practical exploration will be of interest to all readers of fiction and useful to all students of narrative arts, in particular those studying literature and creative writing.
The introductory session will be held on Weds 6 March at 11am in room CW2 BPA, Charles Wilson Second Floor LR Belvoir Park Annexe, University of Leicester, where the information above and other details of the Distributed Reader Study will be discussed to ensure you fully understand the aims and objectives of this short project, the narrative theory behind it, and your role in the gathering of the key data. Distance Learners at University of Leicester and participants from other institutions will be able to access the introductory session and the study materials digitally.
If you are interested in taking part in this study, please contact Dan Powell: dcp10@leicester.ac.uk
By Dan Powell
The end of my first year as a full-time PhD student in Creative Writing is fast approaching. It’s a landmark in my studies that seems double-weighted given the focus of my research-led creative project: the endings of short stories.
Over the last year I have read hundreds of British short stories from across the last 200 years, compiling lists of sample stories for four self-selected periods of focus. I’ve experienced the breadth and depth of endings on offer, in a dizzying kaleidoscope of style and structure and voice. The goal of this research is to identify structural and linguistic trends at work in the sentences that create closure in the story. The data from the initial reading study will be used to build writing frames which I will use in crafting the study's creative element: a collection of short stories.
I had hoped, back when I began drawing up the proposal for this piece of research-led practice, that examining the endings of so many stories might make writing the endings of my own stories a more straightforward activity, that writing endings would cease to be so damnably hard, or failing that, that they would be, at least, a little easier. Alas, wrestling my own endings into submission remains a complex and exhausting exercise.
However, completing the analysis of fifteen contemporary British stories written and published between 1995 and 2015, and reading hundreds of other stories written between 1800 and 2015, has sharpened my understanding of this, the slipperiest feature of any narrative. So here’s the top five things my first year of PhD study has taught me about endings in short stories:
1. There are as many ways to end a story as there are stories. Don’t let your How To Guide to Writing tell you different. Every story needs its own unique solution (or negative solution in the case of contemporary British short stories). The greatest short stories were all lucky enough to have an author who took the time to find that story’s own unique ending.
2. Don’t be happy with the first ending that comes to mind. The first thing you think of is almost never the most fitting, or indeed surprising, ending for the narrative you have set up. Take the time to explore the weirder, darker, more hidden corners of your story. Or if the story is driving inevitably toward an ending that is visible from a distance, find a way to veer off just enough to make it memorable, to make it strange.
3. The most effective endings are those you feel rather than those you have to think about. Endings aren’t about tying up the reader’s understanding of what they have just read with a neat little bow so they can take it away like a party treat. Endings are not a take-home message in a PowerPoint presentation. Endings should be a punch to the gut you weren’t expecting, a slap in the face you didn’t deserve; they should be the unanticipated stroke of a stranger’s fingertip across your skin.
4. Endings are as much about the journey as the end. My research maps (in part) the staging of closure within my sample stories. All of the stories I have studied feature preclosural sentences that mark the end of alternative stories within the overall final story, which is itself marked by the story’s final sentence. Each preclosural sentence, each alternative story, is a stepping stone to an ending. In a short story the end is both imminent and immanent. Build steps toward closure into the very fabric of your stories.
5. The real end of a short story happens off the page, somewhere in the post-narrational thoughts of the attentive reader. It seems Chekhov was right, short stories are, in fact, all middle. Or as Carver put it, "Get in, get out, don’t linger." Or as Vonnegut half-said, "Start as close to the end as possible" and stop just before you reach it. Of course, this means that even the final closure sentence of a story is preclosural.
In short, there are no easy fixes. Endings are slippery beasts. Sometimes you have to wrestle them to the floor and pin them down. Sometimes you have to let them loose and pick up the pieces afterwards. Sometimes you have to stalk them from a distance, until they get where they have always been going. Writing a story that can stand on its own four legs is all about being able to tell when to do what.
About the writer
Dan Powell’s debut collection of short fiction, Looking Out of Broken Windows, was shortlisted for the Scott Prize and longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. The recipient of a Royal Society of Literature Brookleaze Grant and Society of Authors Award, he is currently a Midlands3Cities-funded Doctoral Researcher in Creative Writing at University of Leicester and a First Story Writer-in-residence.
