Singapore's Wena POON longlisted for the 2008 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize

YES, YOU READ IT RIGHT. Wena Poon’s Lions In Winter (MPH Group Publishing, 2007) has been longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize, the world’s richest prize for a published collection short stories. We are really, really happy for her!

Two Irish Man Booker Prize-winning novelists are in contention for the prize for their short stories: Anne Enright’s Taking Pictures (Jonathan Cape, 2008) and Roddy Doyle’s The Deportees and Other Stories (Jonathan Cape, 2007). Glad to know that Carys Davies, Gerard Donovan, Witi Ihimaera, Jhumpa Lahiri, Nam Le, Alison MacLeod, Mary O’Donnell, Benjamin Percy, Robert Shearman, Jim Shepard, Elizabeth Smither and Claire Wigfall are on the longlist as well.

This is the fourth year of the prize, organised by the Munster Literature Centre and funded by Cork City Council in memory of the late Frank O’Connor, one of the world’s most renowned and celebrated short-story writers. In 2005, Yiyun Li received the inaugural prize for her début collection of short stories, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (2005). In 2006, the prize went to Haruki Murakami’s Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2006). And in 2007, Miranda July won it for her excellently unsettling (or settlingly excellent) first collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You (Scribner/Canongate, 2007).

The shortlist will be unveiled in July 2008 and the award’s winner will be announced at the close of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Festival in Cork, Ireland, in September 2008.

Congratulations, Wena Poon!

Here’s the complete longlist:

1. Country of the Grand (Faber and Faber) / Gerard Donovan (Ireland)
2. The Deportees (Jonathan Cape) / Roddy Doyle (Ireland)
3. Taking Pictures (Jonathan Cape, 2008) / Anne Enright (Ireland)
4. Storm Over Belfast (New Island, 2008) / Mary O’Donnell (Ireland)
5. Gilded Shadows (Tia Publishing) / Mary Rochford (Ireland)

6. 29 Ways to Drown (Flipped Eye Publishing, 2007) / Niki Aguirre (Britain)
7. Balancing on the Edge of the World (Salt Publishing) / Elizabeth Baines (Britain)
8. Body Parts: The Anatomy of Love (Salt Publishing) / Richard Bardsley (Britain)
9. The Searching Glance (Salt Publishing) / Linda Cracknell (Britain)
10. Some New Ambush (Salt Publishing) / Carys Davies (Britain)

11. Aromabingo (Salt Publishing) / David Gaffney (Britain)
12. Words From a Glass Bubble (Salt Publishing) / Vanessa Gebbie (Britain)
13. The I Love You Book (Salt Publishing) / William Guy (Britain)
14. Instruction Manual for Swallowing (Comma Press) / Adam Marek (Britain)
15. Little Marvel (Robert Hale Ltd) / Wendy Perriam (Britain)

16. Tiny Deaths (Comma Press) / Robert Shearman (Britain)
17. Broken Things (Salt Publishing) / Padrika Tarrant (Britain)
18. The Loudest Sound and Nothing (Faber and Faber, 2007) / Clare Wigfall (Britain)
19. Torc (Ogo Press) / James Waddington (Britain)
20. Her Father’s Daughter (University of Queensland Press) / John Clancy (Australia)

21. Camera Obscura (University of Queensland Press) / Kathryn Lomer (Australia)
22. A History of the Beanbag (Uwa Press) / Susan Midalia (Australia)
23. The Boat (Alfred A. Knopf/Canongate, 2008) / Nam Le (Australia)
24. Ask the Posts of the House (Raupo) / Witi Ihimaera (New Zealand)
25. Transported (Random House New Zealand) / Tim Jones (New Zealand)

26. Etiquette for a Dinner Party (Random House New Zealand) / Sue Orr (New Zealand)
27. The Girl Who Proposed (Cape Catley) / Elizabeth Smither (New Zealand)
28. Jazz and Twelve O’Clock Tales (Black Sparrow Press) / Wanda Coleman (U.S)
29. Signaling for Rescue (New Rivers Press) / Marianne Herrmann (U.S.)
30. Trespassing: Dirt Stories and Field Notes (Wayne State University Press) / Janet Kauffman (U.S.)

31. Unaccustomed Earth (Alfred A. Knopf/Bloomsbury, 2008) / Jhumpa Lahiri (U.S.)
32. Refresh, Refresh (Jonathan Cape) / Benjamin Percy (U.S.)
33. Knockemstiff (Harvill Secker) / Donald Ray Pollock (U.S.)
34. Like You’d Understand, Anyway (Knopf) / Jim Shepard (U.S.)
35. Desert Gothic (University of Iowa Press) / Don Waters (U.S.)

36. Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction (Hamish Hamilton) / Alison MacLeod (Canada)
37. Lions In Winter (MPH Group Publishing, Malaysia, 2007) / Wena Poon (Singapore)
38. Urn’s Bottom Village Stories (Press Store Publishing) / Egoyan Zheng (Qian-Ci Zheng) (Taiwan)
39. Dandaula and Other African Tales (Precious Styles) / Tubal R. Cain (Nigeria)