Jamie Quatro, American novelist and short story writer, will judge The Plaza Short Story Prize (2500 words max) in 2024.

Jamie Quatro was born in 1972 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Quatro earned her MFA from Bennington College.

Her debut collection, I Want to Show You More (2013), was widely acclaimed for its daring exploration of infidelity and spiritual yearning. The collection was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

In 2018, Quatro released her first novel, Fire Sermon, which follows a woman grappling with a passionate extramarital affair while questioning the role of faith and desire in her life. Her latest novel is Two-Step Devil. It will be released in October 2024. Praise for the novel:-

Jamie is a fantastic writer, and is represented by arguably the best literary agent in the business, either side of the Atlantic, Anna Stein at CAA. For more details, and a picture of a sheep with red horns please go to: https://jamiequatro.com/tsd

OPEN FOR ENTRIES NOW. The Plaza Short Story Prize (2500 words max). Judge: Jamie Quatro. 1st Prize: £1000 ($1250). Deadline: 30th November 2024. 

Win Publication and Build Platform

The Plaza Prizes publishes all the amazing writers who are shortlisted, and win, our literary competitions in a massive 550 page book: The Plaza Prizes Anthology.

This is World Literature at its finest, from the very best new poets and writers. A fabulous mix of poetry, short stories, prose poetry, flash fiction, microfiction and the first chapters from novels, and a memoir.

The anthology is proofread, formatted, and edited by professionals. It costs thousands of pounds to produce. We want it to be a showcase for your work. We use Lulu to print it because that helps us distribute copies all over the world.

Everybody published in the anthology will get a FREE copy on the run up to Christmas. Distributing copies to winners from around the world is quite the task so if you could bear with us, have patience, that would be appreciated.

In the meantime – please do support The Plaza Prizes by buying a copy of the anthology on Shopify. It is available in Trade Paperback and ebook. Help us cover our costs and champion new poets and writers like yourselves.

The Plaza Prizes Anthology 2 will go on sale in November 2024. It will contain the rolls of honour: we will be releasing all the names of those writers and poets who won a spot on our longlists, and those novelists who placed on our shortlists. Buy it as a Christmas present for your friends – this is a very acceptable form of boasting that you are a published writer.

Golden Bay

We will be staging our awards ceremony in Malta, on Wed 16th October 2024, in Swizzles, at the Radisson Golden Sands Hotel, Golden Bay, Mellieha, MLH 5510, Malta.

Thanks to all those who have RSVPed. If you’re attending please aim to arrive between 5.45 and 6.00 PM.

Winners and shortlisted writers and poets will be reading from your work, likely 5-6 minutes per reader.

There will be dinner after the awards and readings are over, likely around 9.00 PM, at Agliolio, a Mediterranean-style hotel restaurant.

We look forward to seeing you all there. Bolt is the best way to zip around the island. All taxis run Uber and Bolt, but they earn more from Bolt fares so they will book those over Uber (they ditch Uber clients if a Bolt client pops up.)

Any questions, please contact: simon@theplazaprizes.com

The Plaza Literary: First Chapters Prize-winners

Big thanks go to U.S. National Book Award Winner, Jason Mott, for judging our winners and giving them some valuable insights and encouragement. We really appreciate very successful authors paying it back, and helping aspiring writers to improve their work and build a platform to launch a publishing career.

All the comments listed below are Jason Mott’s words. If you haven’t read his novels yet – you are in for a treat. They are extraordinary.

Top 4

1st place: The Bright, Bright World by Jaki McCarrick (IRE)

‘A taut, gripping opening crafted with precision and movement. The characters—as deplorable as they are—grab the reader’s attention and promise to provide both fascination and intrigue. This chapter does what an opening chapter should do: it provides a glimpse into something fascinating and yet, somehow, familiar.’

2nd place: The Book of Tears by Heather Newton (USA)

‘A haunting, well-executed opening chapter full of sharp tone and masterful pacing. There is a rhythm and precision to how this chapter unfolds, each sentence pushing the last forward, compelling the reader through the unfolding world of it characters. This is how books should be written.’

3rd place: Promising Lands by Jeffrey Stephens (USA)

‘A wonderful beginning told through a lens that feels necessary and unique. The perspective offered here is one that reinvents the familiar and reminds us why we like story telling. The sense of family and character is expertly delivered and believable. These characters all feel like real, multi-dimensional people. Excellent writing.’

Highly Commended: The Three Arrows by Tamako Takamatsu (JAP)

‘Historical fiction is notoriously difficult to execute, but the research and conveying of information done here is exceptional. The world of this story feels vivid and alive. The description is sharp and the characters well-defined.’

Shortlisted

‘Brave Translunary Things’ by Claire Thomas Hawnt (ENG)

‘Stray Voltage’ by Karen Garloch (USA)

‘The Calico Girls’ by Phoebe Haws (USA)

‘Mammoth’ by Alex Cassidy (ENG)

‘Vivian Maier Framed’ by Axel Forrester (ENG)

‘Salted Earth’ by Muhammad Bandial (ENG)

Long-listed

‘Nothing Really Happened’ by Lisa Overton (ENG)

‘The Betrothed’ by Jeffrey Stephens (USA)

‘The Gift of Sentience and Sorrows’ by Anthony Streeter (ENG)

‘Yggdrasil’ by Judy Birkbeck (ENG)

‘All the Hollow Places’ by Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone (ENG)

‘The Plunge’ by Linda Jordan (N.IRE)

‘Siberia’ by Josh Kemp (AUS)

‘The Hexens of Jackson County’ by Robin Lovelace (USA)

‘Heron’ by Alex Reece Abbott (ENG)

‘Daddy Issues’ by David Newdorf (USA)

Congrats to our four winners. With Jaki’s permission (all rights remaining with her) we will be publishing the start of The Bright, Bright World this October in The Plaza Prizes Anthology 2. Very well done indeed to everyone who made the long-and shortlists!

The Plaza Poetry Prize (20 lines max) is OPEN to enter. Judge: Lachlan McKinnon. 1st prize: £1,000 / 1250. Deadline: 30th September 2024.

The Plaza Short Story Prizes (2500 words max) is OPEN to enter. Judge: Jamie Quatro. 1st prize: £1000 / $1250. Deadline: 30th November 2024.

Booker Prizewinner, Damon Galgut, will judge The Plaza Short Story Prize (5000 words max) in 2025

In 2021, Galgut won the prestigious Booker Prize for his novel The Promise, a multigenerational family saga that grapples with the legacy of apartheid, racial injustice, and broken promises. The novel was widely praised for its innovative structure and deft handling of South African history, making him a key voice in contemporary world literature.

Damon Galgut is a distinguished South African writer, known for his profound literary contributions that explore themes of identity, displacement, and the human condition. Born in Pretoria in 1963, Galgut showed an early affinity for storytelling, writing his first novel, A Sinless Season, at the age of 17. His work is often deeply personal, reflecting the complexities of South African society during and after apartheid.

Galgut’s breakthrough came with The Good Doctor (2003), a Booker Prize finalist, which delves into the moral ambiguities and tensions in post-apartheid South Africa. This novel solidified his reputation as a perceptive chronicler of his country’s fraught history. His sparse, evocative prose and psychological insight draw readers into intense, often unsettling narratives.

Galgut has written plays and short stories, and his work has been translated into multiple languages. His first collection of short stories is titled Small Circle of Beings, published in 1988. This collection includes the title novella as well as other short stories that explore themes of illness, familial bonds, and psychological tension, showcasing Galgut’s early talent for nuanced, introspective storytelling.

OPEN FOR ENTRIES NOW. The Plaza Short Story Prize (5000 words max). Judge: Damon Galgut. 1st Prize: £4000 ($5000). Deadline: 30th April 2025. .

Literary: First Chapters Long List
(titles listed in no particular order)

Top 10

‘The Bright, Bright World’ by Jaki McCarrick (IRE)

‘The Book of Tears’ by Heather Newton (USA)

‘Brave Translunary Things’ by Claire Thomas Hawnt (ENG)

‘The Three Arrows’ by Tamako Takamatsu (JAP)

‘Stray Voltage’ by Karen Garloch (USA)

‘The Calico Girls’ by Phoebe Haws (USA)

‘Mammoth’ by Alex Cassidy (ENG)

‘Vivian Maier Framed’ by Axel Forrester (ENG)

‘Salted Earth’ by Muhammad Bandial (ENG)

‘Promising Lands’ by Jeffery Stephens (USA)

Congrats to the 10 aspiring novelists on our short list. We published your name because you asked us to. We’ll post the winners next week, along with longlist including all writers names.

The Plaza Poetry Prize (20 lines max) is OPEN to enter. Judge: Lachlan McKinnon. 1st prize: £1,000. Deadline: 30th September 2024.

Literary: First Chapters Long List
(titles listed in no particular order)

Top 20

‘Nothing Really Happened’

‘The Betrothed’

‘The Gift of Sentience and Sorrows’

‘Yggdrasil’

‘All the Hollow Places’

‘The Bright, Bright World’

‘The Book of Tears’

‘Brave Translunary Things’

‘The Three Arrows’

‘Stray Voltage’

‘The Calico Girls’

‘Mammoth’

‘Vivian Maier Framed’

‘Salted Earth’

‘Promising Lands’

‘The Plunge’

‘Siberia’

‘The Hexens of Jackson County’

‘Heron’

‘Daddy Issues’

Congrats to all those 20 aspiring novelists on our long list. We do not publish names until the judging process is complete. We’ll publish names with the final results, the winners, short-listed, long-listed. We publish your name because you asked us to.

The Plaza Poetry Prize (20 lines max) is OPEN to enter. Judge: Lachlan McKinnon. 1st prize: £1,000. Deadline: 30th September 2024.

How to Write a Sentence

Insights from Stanley Fish
I know, I know. Writing a sentence may seem like a basic skill, but as Stanley Fish argues in his book How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, it is an art that requires both understanding and practice. Fish, a literary critic and legal scholar, breaks down the structure of sentences, offering insights that transform the way we approach writing. In this article, we will explore Fish’s ideas on crafting effective sentences, the importance of sentence structure, and the role of creativity within the constraints of grammar.

The Art of the Sentence
Fish begins his exploration of sentence construction by asserting that the sentence is the fundamental building block of all writing. A sentence is not just a string of words but a carefully crafted unit of meaning. According to Fish, the art of writing a sentence lies in the writer’s ability to control the relationship between its elements. This control enables the writer to guide the reader’s understanding and to evoke particular emotions or responses.

Fish emphasizes that effective sentences are not necessarily complex or lengthy. Instead, they are well-constructed, with every word contributing to the overall effect. He cites examples from great literature, such as Jane Austen and Ernest Hemingway, to illustrate how different writers use sentence structure to achieve their unique styles. The key takeaway is that the power of a sentence lies in its structure and the deliberate choices made by the writer.

Structure Before Content
One of the central tenets of Fish’s approach to writing is the primacy of structure over content. Fish argues that learning to write effective sentences begins with mastering the structures that sentences can take. Before worrying about what a sentence says, a writer should focus on how it is constructed.

Fish introduces several classic sentence forms that have stood the test of time, such as the cumulative sentence and the periodic sentence. The cumulative sentence starts with an independent clause and then adds modifying clauses or phrases, building up detail and nuance as it progresses. In contrast, the periodic sentence delays the main clause until the end, creating suspense or emphasizing the conclusion. By practicing these forms, writers can develop a sense of control over their sentences, allowing them to manipulate the reader’s experience.

Fish also suggests that writers practice imitating sentences from great writers. This exercise helps in understanding how structure can dictate meaning and how different structures can be used to achieve different effects. Through imitation, writers can internalize the rhythm and flow of well-crafted sentences, which can then inform their original writing.

Creativity Within Constraints
While structure is essential, Fish also acknowledges the importance of creativity in sentence writing. He argues that the constraints imposed by grammar and syntax are not limitations but opportunities for creativity. By working within these constraints, writers can discover new ways to express ideas and emotions.

Fish compares the process of writing a sentence to composing music. Just as a composer must work within the rules of harmony and rhythm, a writer must adhere to the rules of grammar and syntax. However, within these rules, there is infinite room for variation and innovation. A skilled writer, like a skilled musician, knows how to play with these rules to create something new and beautiful.

This view of creativity aligns with Fish’s broader philosophy of writing. He believes that writing is a craft that can be learned through practice and discipline. The more a writer understands the rules and structures of sentences, the more effectively they can manipulate those rules to achieve their desired effect.

The Sentence as a Microcosm of Writing
In How to Write a Sentence, Fish presents the sentence as a microcosm of writing itself. Every sentence, he argues, contains the potential for complexity, beauty, and meaning. By mastering the art of the sentence, writers can improve not only their sentence-level writing but also their overall writing skills.

Fish’s approach encourages writers to pay close attention to the sentences they read and write. He advocates for a deep engagement with language, where every sentence is an opportunity to learn and experiment. This approach transforms writing from a mechanical process into a creative and intellectual exercise.

The Sentence as the Way to Win Competitions
If you cannot master the art of writing effective and affective sentences you cannot win a competition. If your first sentence is not captivating, a prelim judge may start skim-reading. If your reader is not immediately cast into the story, they’re out of it. Bang goes your authority. Bang goes flow. So, the basics really matter! Fish’s book is a reminder that writing is an art that demands both precision and creativity. By embracing the sentence as the fundamental unit of writing, writers can unlock new levels of skill and artistry in their work. Whether you are a seasoned writer or just starting, How to Write a Sentence offers valuable insights that can help you improve your writing, one sentence at a time.

Win Publication and Build Platform

The Plaza Prizes publishes all the amazing writers who are shortlisted, and win, our literary competitions in a massive 550 page book: The Plaza Prizes Anthology.

This is World Literature at its finest, from the very best new poets and writers. A fabulous mix of poetry, short stories, prose poetry, flash fiction, microfiction and the first chapters from novels, and a memoir.

The anthology is proofread, formatted, and edited by professionals. It costs thousands of pounds to produce. We want it to be a showcase for your work. We use Lulu to print it because that helps us distribute copies all over the world.

Everybody published in the anthology will get a FREE copy on the run up to Christmas. Distributing copies to winners from around the world is quite the task so if you could bear with us, have patience, that would be appreciated.

In the meantime – please do support The Plaza Prizes by buying a copy of the anthology on Shopify. It is available in Trade Paperback and ebook. Help us cover our costs and champion new poets and writers like yourselves.

The Plaza Prizes Anthology 2 will go on sale in November 2024. It will contain the rolls of honour: we will be releasing all the names of those writers and poets who won a spot on our longlists, and those novelists who placed on our shortlists. Buy it as a Christmas present for your friends – this is a very acceptable form of boasting that you are a published writer.

Winning Audio Poetry Entries
(titles listed in order)

Our judge this year was poet, author and broadcaster, Paul Farley. All the commentary below is his:-

1st (£1000)
‘The Medical Man’ by Isabel Prior (AUS)
In just over two minutes of audio, time and place and story are brilliantly constructed and evoked. The poem is full of voices, braids together great shifts in perspective and scale—from poinciana flowers to ‘satellite-vast’ bushfires, the working week in a hot Southern Christmastime—and is symbolically resourceful and coherent. Written in the light of the late Bruce Dawe, it also seemed—to me at least—to contain other, older soundings—‘When fiery December sets foot in the forest…’—while all happening in a very recognisable here-and-now. Each time I listened to it, I latched on to something new. It’s a wonderfully rich elegy.

2nd Prize (£300)
‘Our Earthenware Jug’ by Paul McMahon (IRE)
This is a lovely remaking, a broken object poem that contains landscape, time, the course of a fractured relationship in it… Listening to it, it reminds us of how, long before printed words, ‘ekphrasis’ originally meant the conjuring of a thing before the mind’s eye through clinching, clear, vivid description. The telling here is purposeful, focused, nicely measured; and the ending chimed a little for me with a poem I love, Binyon’s ‘Winter Sunrise’, in its gorgeous inversion.

3rd (£100)
‘The Mind’s Eye Sees Red’ by John D Kelly (N.IRE)
This surprised me at several turns, not least in the way it seems to move from its fantastical, whimsical opening towards, by the close, something much more urgent and driven. Along the way, it picks up speed and pulls out the stops in the way it uses voice, sounding a distracted, echoic ‘double-double-take’, making the most of rhyme and refrain, and has an appealing sense of plenitude, of a voice gathering its own music and momentum.

Highly Commended
‘The Smile’ by Morna Finnegan (IRE)
I’ve thought of a dozen different ways to respond to this poem—but in the end, at the risk of sounding corny or glib, essentially this put a smile on my face! The combination of its central imaginative conceit and lovely, warm, buoyant delivery is so freighted with hope, and seems to reach beyond that, too, to have us wonder what a smile is, what a smile can do… I enjoyed it on each relisten and am very happy to award it a commendation.

Comments about the Shortlist
Artclass, Claigmar Gardens, Night Pictures, Perfectly Adequate, Building the Kingdom on Scone Bread, The Wrong Children… I enjoyed listening to you all and can only say: this was tough. Like, really tough. And very close, in trying to distinguish between such strong, varied and interesting work. It’s easy to see (or hear) why you went deep into this shortlist, and I wish you lots of luck with whatever you do next.

Shortlist

‘Artclass’ by Steve Pottinger (ENG)

‘Claigmar Gardens’ by Sylvia Cohen (ENG)

‘Night Pictures’ by Bill Ratner (USA)

‘Perfectly Adequate’ by Lucy Leonard (ENG)

‘Building the Kingdom on Scone Bread’ by Adrian Coyle (IRE/FRA)

‘The Wrong Children’ by Clive Piggott (ENG)

Long list

‘Another Suicide Plan’ by Dena Molen (USA)

‘Mutiny for the Girls’ by Dena Molen (USA)

‘Afterwards’ by Jenny Pollak (AUS)

‘Dark on dark on not listening to the news’ by Jenny Pollak (AUS)

‘The Droplet’ by Robert Campbell (ENG)

‘SC Verdugas’ by Bill Ratner (USA)

‘Learn Ya English Good’ by Gerald Smith (SCO)

‘Canta’ by Morna Finnegan (IRE)

‘7-38 55 Theory of Communication’ by Sally Evans (ENG)

‘The Graphs’ by Christopher Nield (ENG)

Congrats to all our winning audio poets. Well done to the top 20 who made the long and short lists. We’re publishing names with the results because you asked us to.

The Plaza Poetry Prize (20 lines max) is OPEN to enter. Judge: Lachlan McKinnon. 1st prize: £1,000. Deadline: 30th September 2024.