As a youth short story judge for the annual Furphy Literary Award, I have been immersed in the dark and stormy world of the teenage imagination for the past three months.
This year’s winners were announced on Sunday.
I’ve been delving into these fertile solar systems as an FLA judge for the past six years and I can honestly say the teen imagination is in a healthy state. It’s just as fevered, brooding, soaring and unsettling as it was six years ago despite, or perhaps because of, the assaults of Netflix and COVID-19.
I’ve seen ghosts who appear at the end of beds or on streets and which get on buses or walk though walls; dust that whirls and gathers into large blobs that form dark shadows which move silently through houses; monsters that chase you down corridors to eat you; and I’ve been wading through blood — lots of sticky, gooey, runny red blood. I’m telling you, I’ve needed a really strong, fortified cup of tea after reading some of these yarns.
At the other end of the fiction scale, I have enjoyed lovely childhood memories, often cloaked in a sweet nostalgia for times gone by — which is rather quaint considering the age of the writers.
Fantasy and fairy tales have also appeared — all written with great care and sometimes with passages of beautiful poetic prose.
For some strange reason, telephones were a running thread in a lot of these stories. Old-fashioned rotary dial phones and street telephone boxes were no doubt ideas germinated in school projects. But wherever the idea came from — they became potent breeding grounds for tales of suspense, crime, secrets, codes, threats and time travel.
This year we had 55 entries to read from young people aged between 13 and 17 years old who live in the Goulburn Valley. Most of the entries come through local schools, so it’s good to know that teachers are taking the time to encourage and nurture young writers in their classrooms.
Writing can be a lonely business. For an energetic, physical culture that celebrates success through the extrovert yardsticks of sport and business, the idea of sitting in a room alone to think and write can be seen as a tad unhealthy.
But well-told stories have always had the power to inspire and connect people and thus change the external world as well as the internal one. People sitting alone in darkened rooms with nothing but their thoughts wrote The Odyssey and The Bible. These ancient stories were not created by gods whose divine gifts passeth all understanding. They were written and passed down by mortals like us.
Yet, a well-told story doesn’t just arrive on the page like a perfect shiny baby. It is born in the dark, pulsating labyrinths of the mind where it is nurtured before being crafted with a pen or keyboard and polished on the page. Again, it’s a lonely business.
Competitions such as the Furphy offer a chance for young people chasing the Promethean fire to hone their skills, and then snuff out the candle just for a moment so they can come out of their darkened rooms and celebrate with the world.
Their stories are made public; they meet other flame-seekers, and they are rewarded and embraced by a writing community. So writing is not so lonely after all.
Finally, this year’s winning youth story does what all great fiction does better than any other medium — it places you firmly in the body and soul of another human being.
Quite how 17-year-old Laura O’Callaghan from Shepparton, living in a white, privileged world in a safe country, manages to place herself so authentically in the shoes of a teenage girl living under the murderous Taliban in Afghanistan is quite miraculous. In fact, it passeth all understanding.
I urge you to read it. You’ll find all the winning stories and poems at www.furphystory.com.au/furphy-literary-award/
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