Uncharted Mag: 1st Place Contest Winner
Regarding the recent Horror/Thriller Writing Contest held by Uncharted Magazine…
In April of 2022, I was scrolling Instagram when I came across a post by Uncharted Mag advertising a Horror/Thriller/Crime/Mystery First Chapter writing contest. Having never heard of Uncharted Mag, I visited the website, read a few stories that had been published, and reviewed the contest criteria, which specified that submitted work must be the opening chapter of a horror, thriller, or crime/mystery piece. I initially did what I always do when I see writing contests: I considered all of my in-progress and completed projects, did a quick mental inventory of which ones may be fit the specifications, and then ultimately decided against submitting at all out of some deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy.
However, the ad continued to appear in my news feed throughout the month, whispering words of encouragement. Around this time, I also picked back up on the most recent draft of my sideshow novel, Sprezzatura. While rereading the prologue I had written, it occurred to me just how well it met the requirements for the contest: not only was it the first chapter in a larger work, but that larger work contained elements of crime, mystery, thriller, and horror. The prologue alone, set in an asylum in the early 60s and featuring an introduction to a femme fatale murderess, had been heavily inspired by my love of film noir and true crime. I began to fine-tune the prologue and, when the deadline rolled around, I sent it off to Submittable without much hope.
I began writing Sprezzatura when I was an early teen. It has evolved immensely over the years. I really became serious about working on it during my college years, when the need to explore my identity through art and writing became the most intense. My under-grad education focused on Creative Writing, and I attended one of the best conservatories for such studies in the United States. However, throughout my time there, I regularly received convoluted feedback about the excerpts of Sprezzatura that I presented for classroom critique: while many found the characters, settings, and events to be compelling and unique, others found the material too niche and questioned who my target audience was.
But I always knew my target audience: I wanted to use my story about a transgender sideshow performer’s journey of self-discovery to reach any and every reader who had ever felt ostracized, alienated, under-represented, or categorized as a freak because of their looks, identity, orientation, or gender expression. Having grown up with almost no stories about trans people, I wanted to heal that childhood wound of not feeling present in literature by erecting a glittering Big Top and populating it with a bizarre cast of characters with whom we could all relate in some way. However, because I had heard that this specific piece was not accessible enough for the general audience, I had next to no expectations regarding it being selected for publication.
In May 2022, I heard back from Uncharted Mag and was pleasantly surprised to be told that my piece had been selected for the long-list out of numerous submissions, which meant that it would be moving on to the next stage of the contest. While excited, I still had no illusions of being selected as one of the top three winners - until July rolled around and I learned that I had also been selected for the short-list! As one of around 15 other competitors, I finally began to see the reality in my chances of placing.
The next few months were grueling as I began to second-guess myself. However, in the first week of December, I received the long-awaited email which told me I had been selected as the first-place winner in the contest. I was ecstatic and felt a profound sense of confidence in my work for the first time in a long while. The voices telling me it was too niche, too inaccessible, and too uncategorizable began to fall away as I saw, for the first time, that there was an audience for Sprezzatura, if I was only able to finish the story!
My piece, Prologue - or, the Carny Incarcerated, introduces readers to Venus Moonchild, a fame-hungry performer on a quest for self-reinvention that takes her from dusty freakshow tents to velveteen burlesque halls, seedy peepshows to sterile hospital rooms in a cross-country odyssey for love, acceptance, and stardom. Venus is the most “me” character I have written to-date, and I am so happy to finally be sharing her with the world.
The literary agent who selected the winners of the contest had this to say about my piece:
“This story takes a former dream and the glory of being in the dazzling spotlight, and twists it into something invasive and nightmarish. With beautiful prose and a voice so raw with emotion, it’s hard to not catch the irony in how the protagonist is so explicitly human, yet is regarded as a spectacle. Horror can take many forms, and here the sense of sadness will grip you by the throat.”
To read Prologue - or, the Carny Incarcerated, please visit Uncharted Mag here.
