Victoria’s Eliza Robertson wins Commonwealth Short Story Prize
Posted May 31, 2013 2:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
HAY-ON-WYE, United Kingdom – Victoria author Eliza Robertson has won a Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the British Columbia-set “We Walked on Water.”
The story of a boy who loses his twin sister during an Ironman competition in Penticton, B.C., is one of two overall winners of the U.K. honour, worth 5,000 British pounds (C$7,840).
The other overall short story prize winner announced Friday in Wales is Sharon Millar of Trinidad and Tobago for “The Whale House.”
“I feel both grateful and not quite believing to be selected as one of the overall winners of this prize,” Robertson said in a statement. “I am thrilled and thankful for the opportunity to share my work.”
Short story prize chair Razia Iqbal said “it was impossible to decide” between the two stories, noting they both fulfilled their “criteria of excellence in style, originality and tone.”
“It is a measure of the quality we had to choose from in the shortlist that we unanimously settled on two joint winners,” Iqbal said in a statement.
Iqbal called Robertson’s story “exhilarating,” noting its “descriptive writing is nothing short of strikingly beautiful,” and said Millar’s piece “has lush descriptions of landscapes as well as emotion.”
Meanwhile, U.K. author Lisa O’Donnell won the main Commonwealth Book Prize of 10,000 pounds for her coming-of-age debut novel, “The Death of Bees.”
Famed spy novelist John le Carre presented the awards at the Hay Festival.
