19 YEAR OLD WINS THE WRITERS’ UNION OF CANADA’S 20TH ANNUAL SHORT PROSE COMPETITION

19-YEAR-OLD CHLOE HOGAN-WEIHMANN’S “NIGHT CAFÉ” WINS $2,500 CASH PRIZE – WRITERS’ UNION OF CANADA’S 20TH ANNUAL SHORT PROSE COMPETITION

Toronto, May 21, 2013 - The Writers' Union of Canada is pleased to announce that Chloe Hogan-Weihmann has won the $2,500 cash prize for its twentieth annual Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers, for the best story under 2,500 words, with her piece "The Night Café." The Union will submit the winning story and the eleven other shortlisted stories to three Canadian magazine publishers for their consideration.

Chloe Hogan-Weihmann is a 19-year-old university student (doing a B.Sc. in psychology) from Edmonton, Alberta, who just started writing. In her spare time she likes to drink too much coffee, read too many books, and watch too many cartoons. She is trying to learn to play guitar although she is currently impressively bad at it. She is very eager to continue with her writing.

As the Union celebrates its 40^th anniversary this year, it also marks 20 years of the Short Prose Competition. The Competition aims to discover, encourage, and promote new writers of short prose who are not yet published in book format, in order to provide opportunity and exposure to developing writers. This year, twenty-four Union members donated their time and expertise to read 505 outstanding submissions and distill them into a long-list of one hundred and two stories. These stories went on to a second round of twenty-two readers who selected the finalists to pass on to the jury: Ami McKay, Rosemary Nixon, and Mark A. Rayner.

WINNER:

"The Night Café” by Chloe Hogan-Weihmann

The jury “admired ‘The Night Café’ for the risks it took. In this lovely inventive piece, the author creates poetry through intersecting structures. Form and content meld as the imagination of two solitary artistic characters gives rise to a longing beautifully portrayed in, 'He doesn’t fancy himself a poet – it’s just that his loneliness sometimes rhymes.' The writer’s playful slip into future tense as the story moves along its wistful trajectory, and its surprising layering of multiple endings opens possibility, and captures the uncertainty and mystery of the human experience.”

FINALISTS

Imperfect Angels, Sherry Cassells, Toronto, ON
Reasons to Fly, Amy Dixon, Toronto, ON
Safe, Laura M. Kraemer, Calgary, AB
Lift, Brooke Lockyer, Toronto, ON
Tommy’s Mother, Bretton Loney, Halifax, NS
Faith Healer, Kirsteen MacLeod, Kingston, ON
Avó Lives Alone, Emanuel Melo, Toronto, ON
Aquarius, Henry Moll, Campbell River, BC
It Was a Quiet New Year’s Eve for Sonia Finkelman, Honey Oerbach, Oakville, ON
The Methodology of Grace, Maria Reva, New Westminster, BC
The Violinist, Sandra K. Sale, Ajax, ON