Anne Johnson wins the Brno Short Story Writing Contest

Anne Johnson, a longtime force in local cultural life and a loyal supporter of the Brno Expat Centre, wins this year’s edition of the Brno Short Story Writing Contest. Congratulations, dear Anne!

Anne was a runner-up in 2020, ending second with her “Sibling Rivalry” story. This year, by expanding upon one of the most famous books in literature and exploring how a young person survived a perilous period of Brno history, she secured herself the win in the competition.

1st place

The Language of Clouds, by Anne Johnson. Read here

“Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, a novel about Russian aristocrats during the times of Napoleon, is over 1200 pages long and has almost 600 characters. This story selects one character, mentioned briefly, and dives between the lines of Tolstoy’s novel to investigate different interpretations of victory, clouds, and what it means to belong.”

Anne, an American who moved to Brno in 1994, is a medical and academic editor. She co-founded Czech Theater, a group that performs Czech plays in English so that non-Czech speakers can learn a bit about Czech theater culture and so that Czechs can enjoy seeing their own culture through a slightly different lens. She also runs a monthly anything-goes open mic (Comedius). The next open mic is July 2, and the next Czech Theater auditions should be the first weekend in September. 

“The Language of Clouds” uses a small part of the epic “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy to tell the story of a local girl. The idea for it sprouted from a discussion about a contemporary book. “I was in a group discussing Kateřina Tučková’s (recently translated into English) ‘Gerta’ and how it’s interesting that sometimes the tertiary characters seem more interesting than the main ones,” Anne says. “One of the people in the group said that she was reading ‘War and Peace’, a very small part of which was set in Brno; I mentioned that the short story contest had recently been announced, and somehow the next logical step seemed to be to see if there was an interesting tertiary character in the Brno part of Tolstoy’s book that I could do something with. And there was Franz, struggling with the suitcase, and I thought, ‘Why is he struggling?’ and it clicked.” 

2nd place

The Undertaker, by Charlie Trotter. Read here

A dreary Sunday afternoon in Brno, Mick wanders through Brno in search of some inspiration and more importantly a hangover cure.

Charlie, who is half-English and half-Scottish and has worked as an English teacher in Brno for three years, compared experiences from the past and present, with a nod to professional wrestling. 

3rd place

The Dog Heaven, by Ari Dvorak. Read here

Mrs. T learns that she is no longer local in the new age that has come. In between her and her son there is a generation gap growing.

Ari, who is studying Audio Engineering at the Brno University of Technology, wrote “The Dog Heaven” to tell a story about changes in culture and society through two generations. 

Four additional stories were awarded Honorable Mention:

If I Had a Heart, by Marta Martan. Read here

“My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here…”: it sometimes happens that you have left your heart in some other time or place and can never move on and you can never feel that you belong. Set in an alternative history of this corner of the world and seasoned with a tinge of magic realism the story tells a tale of reclaiming one’s heart in times of turmoil and change.

The Bench, by Denisa Petrilakova. Read here

One might have been or felt local at many places, in many cities, and towns. 

Or everywhere, or nowhere.

Or, one might feel local on a bench.

Everywhere Local, by Blanka Šustrová. Read here

A man called Richard starts to experience strange out-of-body consciousness-related phenomena during the pandemic that are later explained by a bearded humanoid cryptid in a purple anorak with a passion for strong Polish lagers that Richard meets in the abandoned main postal building in Brno.

Speakeasy, by Benjamin McCulloch. Read here

A self-absorbed and lonely young expat defies the lockdown and goes to a hidden bar in Brno. His attempts at socialising lead nowhere while he’s plagued by his prejudices.

More about the competition

The BSSWC was a free contest, with only one entry per person. The short stories had to be in English, 2,500 words or less, and include the theme “Where I am Local” in some significant way. The contest was announced on March 1 and entries had to be submitted by email by midnight of May 16. 

The jury included a cross-section of local cultural icons and writing enthusiasts: 

• Don Sparling, a co-founder of the Brno Expat Centre and a longtime leader in the local expat and Masaryk University communities; 
• Tomáš Kačer, a teacher in the Department of English and American Studies at MU, and a translator; 
• Anna Formánková, a translator and a book editor at MOBA Publishing House; 
• Theo Singleton, a member of the Brno Writers Group who finished second in this contest in 2017; and 
• Lee Adams, a freelance writer who co-founded the Brno Writers Group and the Brno Short Story Writing Contest. 

The jury was instructed that the contest was focused on creating a story that included the theme “Where I am Local” in some significant way. The story was the most important aspect, including writing, originality, character development, and plot development. It was understood that most of the entrants would not be native English speakers and that, in fact, this may have been their first attempt to write creatively in English. 

For more information, go to the contest website at brnowriters.wordpress.com.

Written in cooperation with Bruno Zalubil, the organiser of the contest. Thank you, Bruno, for making the contest happen, for the 5th year in a row!