Short Story Writers Awarded

Short-story writing is not an easy task but we never expected nearly 100 entries for our short-story writing competition, says author bureaucrat Sumita Misra, President of Chandigarh Literary Society (CLS).

CLS gave away the prizes to the three top winners of the competition at UT Guest House today.  

Dinker Vashisht won the first prize for his story ‘August Rose’, while Nayantara Singh’s “The Last Tsar”, and Suneet Kheterpal’s untitled story won the second and third prizes respectively. The jury also selected Nayan Jain’s ‘Encounters’, Kailash Srinivasan for ‘Super Khan’, and Pankaj Sharma’s ‘Goodwill Hunting’ for special consolation prizes.

All the six stories were read out by the respective authors to the audience and later the three-member jury comprising city-based noted author Khushwant Singh, writer and journalist Nirupma Dutt, and academician Neel Kamal Puri, spoke about the nuances of writing and appreciating the genre of short-story writing.

The competition involved completing a 1000-word story beginning with the cue, “She was thoroughly enjoying her stroll when a man lying prone on the roadside caught her attention. Fearing the worst, she turned the limp figure over. Her heart leapt a mile when she saw the man’s face…”

Encourage by the response, CLS would be organizing similar competitions to engage and encourage people in creative writing, Sumita Misra informed.

It was a full house 

All years...as the short stories are recited.

The celebrated jury members,
Nirupma Dutt and Khushwant Singh interacted with the audience

The prizes were sponsored by Nando’s and English Book Shop.