I think about the times that people couldn't look me in the eye because I reminded them of someone else. For a long time after Mum died Dad would look at me and cry. So for ages he just stopped looking.
Not For Me To Understand by Shaynah Andrews Winner, 2018 Newcastle Short Story Award
Writing a short story is nothing like writing with a set of training wheels; to strain the analogy, it is more like riding a unicycle, upon which the writer is balanced, juggling six balls in the air, and another on their nose. A novelist has hundreds of pages to create their characters, establish their setting, crank the plot into motion. A short story writer has only a few thousand words... and one of the pleasures of reading an anthology of stories such as this one is encountering a wide variety of images, styles, characters, plots and worlds.
Ryan O'Neill & Isabelle Li, Judges 2018