Summer
Welcome to the Alpine Fellowship Journal Summer Edition.
It’s fairly safe to say that a lot has changed in the world since our last edition. First of all we want to say that, wherever you are reading this, we hope that you are safe and healthy.
Fortunately, we also have some good news! A few weeks ago we announced the prize winners for all of our prizes this year. If you entered thank you for sharing your work with us, it was an honour to see so much talent and enthusiasm, especially at such a challenging time.
You can find out more about our winners below - we hope to be able to publish their work on our website very shortly.
Plus, we’ve got reading recommendations from some of our past guests and prize winners, an interview with Writing Prize judge and poet Ella Duffy and a brief message from our founder about what impact of the pandemic. And remember, you can find hours of engaging videos, lectures and panel discussions on our YouTube channel
Enjoy!
Winners
First of all, we’ll begin with some good news. This week we proudly announced the winners of our Writing Prize and Theatre Prize, to go along with previously announced winners of our Art Prize and the first ever winner of our Academic Writing Prize.
If you didn’t make it this year, please don’t be discouraged. The standard was extremely high and many difficult decisions were made. We encourage you to keep working on your discipline and we hope you will consider applying next year.
Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize 2020 Winners
WINNER - Nick Clark
RUNNER UP - Maya Catherine Popa
RUNNER UP - Emma Venables
Alpine Fellowship Art Prize 2020 Winners
WINNER - Shahrzad Farazi
RUNNER UP - Kay Rufai
RUNNER UP - Sally Roberts
Alpine Fellowship Theatre Prize 2020
WINNER - Sue Bevan
RUNNER UP - Tabitha Dalton
RUNNER UP - Phoebe Taylor
Alpine Fellowship Academic Writing Prize 2020
WINNER - Leonie Ettinger
RUNNER UP - Sarah Ang
RUNNER UP - Tara McEvoy
Alessandra Cavalli
1957-2020
Our community commiserates the passing of Alessandra Cavalli. Alessandra was a guest at our annual event on ‘Childhood' in 2018, where she gave a wonderful talk on early childhood development through the lense of her outstanding work as an analyst of children and young adults. She was a world-renowned expert in her field at the height of her career. We came to know her personally as a warm, kind and joyful soul who balanced high quality thinking with depth of feeling. Her talk below shows some of what we and so many others loved and admired about her. She’ll be missed.
Thought from our Founder
The previous months have reminded me of an intrinsic feature of the human experience: dreaming. We have a tendency to live a lot of our present through the prism of the future. Our future selves are demanding actions from us now, and much of the meaning today is generated not through our present selves but through this imagined future, it circles back and shapes today. For some, the Covid months have been the final act in some kind of Baudrillardesque ‘precession of simulacra’: life went online. For others a small and painful split appeared in hyperreality and they learnt that their dreams were exactly that: dreams, and perhaps their house now felt too small, their world too tiny, and the narrative that had held meaning together fell into disarray.
Others baked bread, made tik tok videos, talked, read books, learnt a language. And for some, this has been months of physical and mental struggle, fighting day and night to support their communities. Camus' 'La Peste' is apparently selling out, so it should, but not just during pandemics. It's a wonderful book about struggle and meaning, and human fraternity. I've read it half a dozen times, and again just recently because heck we're living in quarantine. There are so many lines to quote and passages to underline. It's a book about suffering. The agonising suffering of people and the unflinching Dr Rieux who at one point holds the hand of a dying child, '...the beating of their two hearts, united for a minute, would cease to harmonise; the child escaped him and his efforts dissolved into nothingness.'
It's also a book about meaning, and though Camus rejected the existentialist creed, there are moments where meaning is generated in a meaningless universe. Perhaps not moral meaning but meaning made through living, as when they go swimming in a rare respite from the Plague. 'The town rose up in stages behind them and a warm, sick breath was coming from it which drove them to the sea.' The sea is 'thick as velvet, warm and smooth as a wild animal.' and 'Rieux, who could feel the pitted face of the rock under his fingers , was filled with a strange happiness.' Camus is never sentimental and even when Rieux lies on his back in the sea 'looking up at the bowl of the sky, full of moon and stars' he maintains a loyalty to meaning generated by the simple act of swimming with his friend.
- Alan Lawson
What have we been reading?
One thing that seems universal at the moment is that we all have a bit more time on our hands. So, we thought we’d pull together a reading list of recommendations to help fill the extra hours you might find yourself with. Whether you want to finally catching up with the great philosophers, ticking classic novels off your list or find calm in a collection of poetry, here’s a few suggestions to help you on your way.
Jessica Swale - Writer and director
Lanny by Max Porter is one I cannot recommend highly enough. The simplistic description is that it’s the tale of a nature-obsessed boy who goes missing, and the consequences on those around him- his mum, dad, a hermit artist who befriends him, the whole village (as a character) and the mythical figure Dead Papa Timewort. But LANNY is so much more than a story. It’s a prose-tone poem-myth-verbal experiment, a hymn to nature, a kaleidoscope of words and philosophy, at once both postmodern and tapping into something ancient. It is a startlingly original fable, a warning and a love song to the wild. And at a moment when we’re all so aware of our relationship with the environment, the joy of tapping back into the wilderness and the fragility of life, this book couldn’t be more timely. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Jacob Burda - Founder
Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas. It’s a masterful and awesome synthesis of the history of Western thought, outlining, in beautiful prose, the foundations of our particular postmodern moment in time. It’s got the rigour that is the hallmark of great academic writing, but goes beyond much of modern day academia in that Tarnas is not just a detached scholar - he’s an involved and caring human being. I’ve only been able to read 10-15 pages at a time. That’s how dense it is. Amazing insights pouring out from almost every page. Highly recommend it.
Alan Lawson - Founder
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. My son and I figured this was a moment to tackle such an enormous book, so we ordered two copies, and we're waltzing our way through ballrooms, masonic meetings, love trysts, and battle scenes. It is a very long book (perhaps needlessly so at times) but it is outstanding. I highly recommend it mostly for the observant and sensitive way that the inner lives of characters, with all their contradictions and frailties, are brought to life.
Andrew Huddlestone - Academic Writing Prize Judge
In a time of lockdown, when travel is impossible, I've particularly enjoyed reading good travel writing. I recently read Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris. It is of course about Trieste, but also one of the most profound treatments I know of about the significance of place in our lives and its entanglement with memory.
Daniel Bailey - Theatre Prize Judge
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I feel a keen sense of liberation surrounding us but I'm quite sceptical of history.
Lucy Foster - 2019 Theatre Prize Winner
The High Table by Temi Wilkey, which debuted at the Bush Theatre earlier this year, and adored the way that it meshed African history, spirituality, and modern familial and personal relationships in order to explore queerness and homophobia within the black community. It's breathtakingly beautiful and has stuck with me since. Two other plays I've enjoyed reading recently are Swallow by Stef Smith and Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris.
Caroline Sposto - 2019 Writing Prize Runner-up
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis. Written in 1925, it’s about a scientist who faces an outbreak of bubonic plague and has to deal with the same problems that today’s public health experts are facing - politics, funding, and society.
Caroline Byrne - Theatre Prize Judge
The Whip by Juliet Gilkes Romero which recently premiered at the Royal Shakespeare Company. It’s set in the 19th century and is about the timely and uncomfortable discourse about British colonialists and the slave trade. The Whip dramatises the conflicting stakeholders involved in the abolition of slavery and the compensation of slave owners, the bill of which has just recently been paid off. It’s brilliant.
ELLA DUFFY - Writing Prize Judge
What was your impression of the entries this year?
With over 2000 entries received this year, the task ahead felt dizzying. But when a piece of writing appeared which seemed to clear a space around it with its freshness and confidence, it set the standard for the longlist.
What struck me almost straight away was the variety of voices and tone - moving, intense, raw, often unexpectedly funny. A great number of the entries sung from places of grief or pain, many with a focus on the political. We were looking for that vital spark between subject and form which brings a good poem or prose piece to life.
Did you notice any patterns or similarities in the way writers approached the theme?
What was thrilling about this year’s entries was the variety of approaches to the theme. The most interesting were those entries where the writer ‘told it slant’, not allowing the theme to simply dominate. Inevitably, there were recurring patterns and subjects - friendship, religion and parenthood being typical. However, a writer was never judged on their choice of topic, but the way in which they approached it. Those who were successful approached the theme with originality and memorability and a willingness to test the possibilities of language.
What do you think makes a stand-out piece of writing?
The process of choosing a longlist provides a kind of landscape of the year’s entries. Sometimes the view seems unchanging but then suddenly opens up. The successful entries were ones which made you get up from your desk, have a walk around, then return to read and re-read. These were the pieces which I found myself thinking about days after reading. These were the writers who seemed to have even surprised themselves with their words. These entries had a definite sense of form and style working in tandem with the subject.
What advice would you give to anyone who didn't make the longlist this year, but is interesting in applying again next year?
Read widely, do drafts, get feedback. Which is perhaps less about winning prizes and more about honing your craft as a writer. But when entering a writing competition, I would avoid worrying about what you think the judges will enjoy or being influenced by past winning entries, but writing from a place of authenticity, of genuine interest and excitement. Also, never be afraid to take risks.
That’s all for now
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The Alpine Fellowship