After the literary awards
(Baonghean.vn) - The year 2022 marks the strong activities of the literary community with large-scale competitions from the Central to provinces, cities, departments and branches. The Vietnam Writers Association has a campaign for writing for children. The Literature and Arts Newspaper has a short story contest with a total prize value of up to more than 300 million VND. In particular, the contest with the theme "Writing about workers and trade unions" of the Labor Newspaper has a prize for novels of 400 million VND/first prize and short stories of 200 million VND/first prize.
Spreading social sentiment through writing contests
Recently, on September 14, 2022, the Ho Chi Minh City Writers Association in collaboration with the Ho Chi Minh City Literature and Arts Magazine organized the preliminary summary of the 2022 Good Short Story Contest. After more than 30 years, the Ho Chi Minh City Literature and Arts Magazine Good Short Story Contest was re-organized with a large, systematic and widely distributed award scale in the writing community. Although it only took place for a short time from the beginning of the year to the end of 2022, the 2022 Good Short Story Contest of the Ho Chi Minh City Literature and Arts Magazine attracted writers from all over the country, even from authors living abroad.
Up to this stage, the organizing committee has received more than 600 entries with many topics and selected more than 100 works to be published in the magazine. This is an impressive number because the contest is short and local in scale. Through that, we can see that the authors and writers are always diligently contributing and living with literature with a mindset of being concerned with social stories.
The more writing competitions, the more attractive it is for writers to unleash their pens. Writer Uong Trieu - Editor of the Army Literature Magazine, who has many years of experience as a judge in many literary competitions, shared: “Having many literary awards is a good thing because it proves that society and different institutions care about literature and its influence and effects. Having many competitions will stimulate writers because when they participate, they will receive titles and rewards - which is the purpose and stimulation of creativity, especially for young writers.
Furthermore, in the context of literature being stagnant, reading culture declining and modern means of entertainment taking the lead, literary competitions will attract the attention of the community; literature will create or regain influence on culture and social life.
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Summary of the "Good Short Story 2022" Contest organized by Ho Chi Minh City Literature and Arts Magazine. |
Not only in purely literary units such as the Writers' Association and Literature and Arts Magazines, but in 2022, literary competitions of ministries and branches also flourished, such as the recent award by the Ministry of Public Security for the "Writing about the image of the People's Police" contest to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People's Police Force's tradition.
This competition has just been awarded, then another competition follows, such as the short story and essay contest “The grassroots police soldier for the peaceful village, serving the people”. The Guard Department under the Ministry of Public Security also organized a writing contest with the theme “The image of the People’s Police Guard soldier” to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the force’s founding. Or the Education Publishing House has just organized an award ceremony for the writing contest “My favorite book page”.
Writer Hoai Huong - a veteran writer of Ho Chi Minh City's literary scene, who has also won awards in recent writing competitions, commented: "The more prestigious the organization, the higher the award, and the clearer the way of working, the more quality and quantity each competition will bring. Regardless of the level, each literary competition has a certain meaning to society."
Behind the competitions
Literature is not just a sudden coming and going. An award does not make a name for any writer, but the long journey with literature through new works is the proof of one's destiny with literature. However, there are still many cases that shine from a competition, then disappear somewhere in the flow of literature that no one remembers.
Explaining this, writer Uong Trieu shared: “In the blossoming of “hundreds of houses competing”, many competitions and awards are only at the level of a movement or in a very narrow profession, region, or context; the quality and resonance may only reach a certain threshold. Awards are sometimes just beautiful flowers on the literary journey, they do not determine the absolute value of the work, the author, and in reality, in many competitions, the organizing committee and the jury have their own specific criteria. Awards stimulate creativity and continue, not reaching the peak and then stopping. Being overly proud or delusional and satisfied with awards is a mistake, literature requires the inner strength and perseverance of each individual, awards are just a catalyst, please do not absolutize it”.
Current literary competitions have also produced many young, outstanding names such as Phan Duc Loc (Nghe An), Tran Thi Tu Ngoc (Ha Tinh), Le Quang Trang (An Giang), Hien Trang (Hanoi)... These young people are always diligent in writing, as diligent as bees in their hive of words. Then, every year they have new books released such as Phan Duc Loc with "I will fly" - September 2022; Le Quang Trang with "The bright streak of dust" just won the 20-year-old Literature Award of Tre Publishing House.
Also from this 20-year-old Literature Contest, a young author won the Second Prize (no First Prize) with the work “Memory Fragments”, that is Yang Phan (Ho Chi Minh City). For a young author coming from online writing sites and trying his hand at a major contest for the first time. Yang Phan shared: “Depending on the time of the writer, each literary award has a different meaning. For young authors, it is the motivation and support for them to develop further. At the present time, literary awards are also a way for the young generation of authors to evaluate the adaptation of critics and the perspective of previous writers”.
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Awarding ceremony for the "Writing about the image of the People's Police" Contest organized by the Ministry of Public Security. |
It is easy to see that young authors, the 9X and 2K generations, are always the bright spots and surprises for today's writing competitions. They have made the competition more diverse in terms of topics and writing styles. The modernity and dynamism of young authors make the competitions a thrilling and challenging race. However, each writing competition, after finding the winner, cherishes and sends out expectations afterwards. The journey behind an award for the winner is always the most difficult journey, not the stage of participating in the competition.