A retired civil servant with a vivid imagination has won the Times Colonist’s fifth annual So You Think You Can Write competition.
“I’m so excited. That’s really cool,” said C.J. Papoutsis, who earned the highest number of points awarded to the four finalists who received weekly assignments over the past month.
She said she doesn’t consider herself a “competition-type” but decided to enter the Times Colonist contest because of a supporter’s persistence.
“I’ve had a few stories published, though, and my friend just kept emailing me,” she recalled.
Papoutsis, 65, worked as a secretary for the provincial government for 35 years but has always had “a wicked imagination” and has often met “interesting people,” she said.
A member of Crime-writers of Canada who has also taken courses at Camosun College, she said she writes most days because she loves it and seems to have a knack for it.
The finalists’ weekly assignments were in a variety of formats, including short story, poetry and creative non-fiction.
The first piece Papoutsis was honoured for was Bitter Lemons, her amusing submission about a woman with low self-esteem who envies a seemingly perfect rival.
The initial effort had to contain the words capital, fifth, opinion, reader, sound and type.
The other three finalists, chosen from 110 entrants who accepted the challenge to write a story or poem of up to 250 words in an open call, were Helen Sharp, Amei Mai and Gerry McIntyre.
The judges were David Leach, chairman of the department of writing at the University of Victoria; Nikki Tate, author of more than 20 books for young readers; and Julie Paul, whose new short stories collection, The Pull of the Moon, came out this fall.
Readers were also invited to vote for their favourite piece of writing each week.
The finalist who receives the most online votes overall wins an Asus Transformer Book from Mother Computers. This year’s Readers’ Choice winner is Amei Mai.
The 25 semifinalists each received a gift certificate from Bolen’s Books.
Papoutsis’s creative non-fiction piece using an object to trigger a memory was They Grow in Tin Cans, Don’t They? a humorous flashback to eating canned vegetables as a child.
“That one was the most fun,” she said. “I really remembered that.”
Papoutsis was also praised for West Coast Winter Rain, a poem the judges said effectively used repetition to evoke the weather.
In Missing But Not Lost, she reflected on a beautiful gold chain with a cross that a young girl cherishes so much she risks wearing it somewhere without her mother’s knowledge.
The most challenging assignment was one calling for finalists to write without using any adverbs, Papoutsis said.
“It pointed out to me how bandied around they are in our speech,” she said. “I said: ‘I can’t do that!’ I nearly went postal a couple of times. But it was really good for me.”
Papoutsis wins a trip for two to the 2015 Galiano Island Literary Competition, including ferry and accommodation at the Galiano Inn.
