Congratulations to Adina Pelle, winner of the 500-word ‘woman’ challenge with her modern take on a classic tale, Romeo No Longer Loves Juliet.

Adina wins a copy of Write Great Fiction – Dialogue by Gloria Kempton.

Thank you to all who entered this round. The entries ranged from warm to laugh-out-loud funny, heart-rending to downright creepy. Each was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Warm thanks also to our guest judge this month, Danielle Benda. Danielle is a veteran journalist, radio producer/broadcaster and, most recently, program manager for the Perth Writers Festival.

Danielle was given only the titles and text of each entry, without author names, and agreed not to read the posted versions so was not aware of ‘likes’ or comments. See below for her thoughts on this round.

A reminder that the April 500-word challenge is currently open. Write up to 500 words around the theme ‘hero’ and send them to waxings.blog@gmail.com by midnight, 4 May 2011 (AWST, GMT+8). The winner will receive a copy of Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

Judge’s comments:

The nine stories that were presented this month offered such a variety of styles and approaches to the topic ‘woman’, it was quite hard to compare one with the other. There were a couple that attracted my attention, and I found the final choice a bit tricky.

Romeo No Longer Loves Juliet won because I liked its original voice.

It subverted a traditional story, central to our culture and then gave us layer upon layer of cataclysmic disaster to question why such story – or type of story – has this central place in our culture anyway. It has a nice dry, ironic tone and cliches are used with good effect.  A couple of spelling and grammar errors marred it.

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Win A Publishing Contract

Text Publishing is offering a publishing contract plus a $10,000 advance on royalties to the winner of this year’s Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing.

Submissions of unpublished manuscripts will be accepted from 2 May to 3 June, with the winner announced at the Australian Booksellers Association Conference in Melbourne on 24/25 July.

More details and the entry form are available here.

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Latest Posts

I know I keep harping on about it but it’s important – Waxings is intended to be a forum for airing and sharing. Please share your work with us, take the time to read work posted by other contributing writers and provide constructive feedback.

Our most recent posts are short stories, The Blue Dress and The Cherry Tree by Adina Pelle and Married To A Laugh by Neil Lade. I’d love to read and post your latest words.