Education

Sunday May 10, 2009

Picking the best

By PRIYA KULASAGARAN

Originality, creativity and language were among the winning factors the IMPAC Dublin 2009 judges were looking for.

AFTER waxing lyrical over the best things in life, it’s time to see if you’re one step closer to achieving your dream – 20 entries have been shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Young Malaysians 2009 essay writing competition.

The grand prize is a trip for two to Dublin, Ireland, to meet the finalists of the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the world’s richest book prize.

Going through the entries are (standing from left): Duggan, Raman, Adele and Ng, (seated from left): Maizan, Hutchinson and Dr Mooney.

This year’s competition received the most number of entries with almost 1,000 Malaysians between the ages of 14 and 18 sending their essays.

Of these, only 20 entries were shortlisted after the judging last week at the residence of Irish ambassador to Malaysia Eugene Hutchinson.

The grand prize and recipients of the nine merit awards will be announced on May 15.

The twenty are Adeline Tan Mei Yin, Amanda Lo An Qi, Aw Siew Bee, Catryn Tong Zhongguan, Evonne Tong Li Ern, Hannah Joyce Jonas, Hillary Wee Wei Lee, Ho Hui Jan, Janna Wong Qian Ern, Kay Chai Yu Yuan, Loh Kai Syuen, Manimaalini Kunasegaran, Melissa Kong Chern Mei, Ng Jia Yi, Nurul Kamilah Mat Kamil, Ong Joe Den, Phraveen Arikiah, Rahayu Adzhar, Rebekah Dawn Ba’o Ritchie and Sheryl Lynne Tan.

Present at the session were Hutchinson, honorary consul of Ireland Datuk Dr Peter Mooney and Silverfish Books managing director Raman Krishnan and members of the committee who were involved in shortlisting the candidates.

They included the ambassador’s wife, Adele, and the deputy head of mission of the Irish embassy, Eoin Duggan.

Other judges were Star Publications (M) Berhad group editorial/education adviser Datuk Ng Poh Tip and the national library’s senior deputy director Maizan Ismail.

Hutchinson felt that the topic of this year’s competition, “The Best Things In Life”, contributed to the encouraging response.

“We deliberately picked an open-ended topic, so that students were allowed more room to invent their own stories. I think this caught the eye of a lot of young people.”

Other judges shared this view, adding that the quality of entries had improved along with quantity.

“It was a tough judging process because the standard of the entries were quite high, both in terms of command of language as well as the ability to express thoughts creatively,” said Maizan.

The judges picked the 20 finalists from a list of 27 entries, which had undergone a screening process by the shortlisting committee.

Hutchinson said that the judging team was made up of very diverse individuals, but the generally agreed criteria were creativity, originality, use of language, coherence and language mechanics.

“I think originality and creativity are important to make a piece of work stand out, as these qualities show that a student has put some real thought to his or her writing,” said Hutchinson.

Raman had his own way of judging the creativity of the submissions, which he describes as “looking for a tiny spark”.

“What I’m looking for are lines that jump off the page and demand to be read; words that say this student has a real potential to be a writer,” he elaborated.

However, he was quick to point out that entrants who did not win the competition were not bad writers.

“A perfect example is a girl who was not shortlisted in last year’s competition, but I had the chance to read her other works and they were all publishable material.”

Now in its seventh year, the competition is organised by the Irish Embassy, IMPAC, The Star and the National Library of Malaysia, with support from the Education Ministry.

The sponsors are the Irish Universities and Medical Schools Consortium, which represents Irish universities in Malaysia, the St Patrick’s Society of Selangor, Exchange Trade Centre International, Tech-Surf Technologies and the Malaysian Irish Alumni Association.

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