“Fournel’s Bouquet” – Jugiong Writer’s Festival – Short Story Competition

I’m pleased to advise that I won first prize in the Open Section of the Jugiong Writer’s Festival Short Story Competition, for my story “Fournel’s Bouquet”.

The Festival was held on the weekend of 23-24 March and (apparently) the winning stories were read at the Festival. I had no idea I had won, only finding out when I logged onto their website today to see if the winners had been announced.

The story had to under 1,000 words and based on the theme “Dare to Dream – Down The Track”.

I used Oulipo writer Paul Fournel’s 2006 piece “Novels” (translated by Daniel Levin Becker) as slight inspiration (hence the title of the story). His work “an extended descendent of Queneau’s ‘Exercises in Style’, in which the same mundane anecdote is retold in ninety-nine ways. ‘Novels’ mines the contours of a decidedly dramatic story by telling it from seven different perspectives.” (Taken from ‘All That Is Evident Is Suspect; Readings from the Oulipo 1963-2018’). One of his seven perspectives is from the voice of a flower bouquet.

My story is purposely genderless and contains a number of other Oulipo techniques (you’ll have to guess them!!!)

You can read it in the Jugiong Writer’s Festival Winning Short Story Booklet, here.

I’m chuffed, now back to the writing!