Match Point, the only UK literary competition for unpublished short stories in Italian, is getting ready for its 5th edition. This year the theme is ‘’Ricordi’’ (Memories):
‘’And to write a story—fiction, autobiography, intimate or collective memory—about memory. About things remembered or the process of remembering; about personal or historical memory, about our generation or another, fresh from a few hours ago or from a distant season. Let us delve into the clear or complicated curves of memory. And let us take a bite, like Proust, of our madeleine. On the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Circle, we couldn’t imagine a better theme. Memories as fuel for our present. Because, to quote Faulkner, the past is never dead: it’s not even truly past’’.
It is a very exciting theme to work on, not only because it has a very wide span in terms of creativity (dystopic or real), but also because memories are among the most important building blocks of our spirit.
What would we be without those flashes that, suddenly, because of a photo, a gesture, a word, bring us back to an important moment in our lives? A moment that, maybe, has changed the course of our lives? Or, maybe, a person who is not with us anymore but continues to inspire our behaviour.
There are many learned opinions about memories, their power and the incommensurable loss we feel when people close to us lose them due to illness.
Very interesting is how we treat memories: do we see things as they were actually or do we tend to colour them to suit our mood of the moment? There is a beautiful quote on this, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, somebody who played with memories to give some unforgettable books: ‘’ He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.’’ Do you agree?
The competition is organised by Il Circolo, a dynamic Italian charity operating in the UK, together with ‘’Londra scrive’’, a creative writing school funded and run by Marco Mancassola, a writer in his own right. In the last few years, writers who graduated from ‘’Londra scrive’’ appeared often in the top sold book’s listings in Italy.
Adding further prestige to Match POiNT is the collaboration, started last year, with Premio Calvino, the most famous Italian prize for unpublished short stories. The competition is also part of the ‘’Settimana della Lingua Italiana nel Mondo’’ sponsored by the Italian Institutions to celebrate the Italian language worldwide.
The judging panel is made up of writers like Olga Campofreda, Daniele Derossi, Paolo Nelli, Caterina Soffici, literary agent Isabella D’amico and journalist, writer and translator Monica Capuani, coordinated by Marco Mancassola.
To participate, you must be a UK resident. The deadline for the presentation of the short stories is the 14th of June.
