5. Lesbischer Literaturpreis

[mothwing]

«5. Lesbischer LiteraturPreis»

Schon zum 5. Mal schreibt der el!es-Verlag für das Jahr 2011 den »Lesbischen LiteraturPreis« aus.

Wettbewerbsbedingungen:

1. Teilnehmen können ausschließlich Frauen.
2. Eingereicht werden können lesbische Liebesromane oder Romane, die das lesbische Leben zum Thema haben. Ebenso sind sogenannte »Uber«-Storys erlaubt.
3. Eine Länge von mindestens 60.000 Wörtern und ein Happy End sind für den Roman zwingend erforderlich.
4. Zudem wären wir sehr froh, wenn der Roman im Präteritum geschrieben wäre und nicht im Präsens. Auch geben wir der Perspektive aus der 3. Person den Vorzug vor der Ich-Perspektive.
5. Schicken Sie eine Inhaltsangabe (die bitte im Präsens und nicht im Präteritum), die ca. eine halbe bis eine DIN-A4-Seite umfaßt, und eine Kopie Ihres Romans im .rtf- oder .doc-Format an manuskripte@elles.de, zusätzlich mit einer Kurzbiographie, in der Sie sich kurz vorzustellen, Ihrem vollständigen Namen und Ihrer E-Mail-Adresse. Bitte benennen Sie die Datei nach folgendem Muster:
Vorname_Nachname__Titel.rtf (Vorname_Unterstrich_Nachname_Unterstrich_Unterstrich_Titel.rtf)
Bitte Name, Postadresse und E-Mail auch am Ende der Inhaltsangabe noch einmal angeben.
6. Sofern Sie den Roman oder Teile davon bereits auf dem Internet veröffentlicht haben, geben Sie bitte die Webseite an, auf der der Text veröffentlicht wurde. Ausgewählte Romane müssen vor dem Beginn des Lektorats aus dem Netz genommen werden.
7. Die Regeln der Rechtschreibung und Grammatik sollten korrekt umgesetzt sein. Bitte verwenden Sie die Rechtschreibprüfung Ihrer Textverarbeitung, bevor Sie uns das Manuskript schicken.
8. Für die Veröffentlichung kann natürlich ein Pseudonym verwendet werden, das jedoch aus einem Vor- und einem Nachnamen bestehen sollte.
9. Die Inhaltsangabe und ein Auszug des eingesandten Manuskriptes (nicht der vollständige Text) werden einen Monat vor Vergabe des Preises auf der Internetseite www.elles.de veröffentlicht. Die el!es-Leserinnen stimmen dann online darüber ab, welches der eingesandten Manuskripte den Preis gewinnt.
10. Die ausgewählten Romane werden vor der Veröffentlichung von uns lektoriert.
11. Einsendeschluß ist der 31.03.2011.

Der Preis für den besten Roman ist ein Wochenende für zwei (weibliche) Personen in der Frauenpension Bertingen (http://www.frauenpension-bertingen.de/) und die Veröffentlichung des Romans bei el!es (selbstverständlich mit einem entsprechenden Vertrag und Honorar).

here at édition el!es.

I thought this might be interesting for some of you. Last year, many of the submissions were amazingly bad (also, my favourite contestant did not win, sadly, so I'm probably biased), hopefully they'll be better this year.

It's odd what people submit to a contest hosted by a publisher who, if you win, publishes your manuscript as a book - as though paragraphing and, in some cases, compelling characters and spelling were entirely optional. You see, I'm notoriously bad at re-reading and editing my own work, too, but I had hoped that if you're going to submit your work to a publisher you might want to have someone else beta it first.

Also, I absolutely do understand and appreciate that this is a minority publisher aimed at and run by a specific minority, but I admit I'm getting uncomfortable by the way the publisher emphasises this: 

«Lesen!»

[...]
Und ja: Dies ist ein lesbischer Wettbewerb, für Lesben, weil das hier nämlich eine lesbische Webseite ist, weil el!es ein lesbischer Verlag ist, der ausschließlich lesbische Bücher herausbringt, und weil ich eine lesbische Schriftstellerin und Verlegerin bin, die sich nicht ständig mit irgendwelchen sexuellen Phantasien von Heterofrauen herumschlagen will, die nichts mit dem lesbischen Leben zu tun haben.

Ruth Gogoll.

.... So, not me, then, I guess, ok. Going by this as well as her other comments, I also kinda doubt that she knows non-monosexual people even exist.

Still, I'm looking forward to this year's submissions, the inevitable drama and the possible additions to my to-read-pile.

Comments

[ysilme]

I also kinda doubt that she knows non-monosexual people even exist. *g*

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Seriously, all she ever seems to mention are lesbians and heterosexuals, a rigid dichotomy, as though the rest of use aren't important enough to ever mention or simply don't exist.

[tetleythesecond]

I think I now know why I never read anything by Ruth Gogoll. And I think I now know that I never will.

I also think that it is no surprise that the submissions can be excruciatingly bad because what good writer would want to submit herself to a mandatory happy end and a contest where the organiser already stipulates her preferred tense and voice? And is it just me, or does this look like Gogoll also is the sole juror? -- sorry about this. Reading before hitting the post button really helps sometimes.

I'll be doing femgenfication, kthxbye, Ruthie.

But thank you for the heads-up on this! I had actually thought that we had got further than this -- now I'm itching to prepare a little letter for next year's edition (bit late for this year's, I suppose)

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I'm mystified by her books. Judging by the titles as well as the extracts on her site ("Die Liebe meiner Träume" (http://www.elles-shop.de/leseproben/Leseprobe__Die_Liebe_meiner_Traeume.pdf?osCAdminID=7ff780f829d26651691ac75b71394fac&osCsid=cf1dc34ca71d8d9ab331c1d879823816), "Tizianrot" (http://www.elles-shop.de/leseproben/Leseprobe__Tizianrot.pdf) "Eine romantische Geschichte" (http://www.elles-shop.de/leseproben/Leseprobe__Eine_romantische_Geschichte.pdf?osCsid=241dc5ea045590e5119504d17307c83e)) they're... really not good. Not that I could do any better, mind, but then, I'm not making a living of writing and publishing books.

Even though I was really taken aback by it at first I warmed to and now actually like the happy-end clause because so many lesbian-themed stories end in tragedy, but like her other demands it's so weirdly specific. I mean, I probably wouldn't want to read a story written in first person and present tense that ends in violence, but that doesn't mean it can't be done, it just means that in the end, I most likely wouldn't vote for that story in the contest. Why not leave it up to her readers whether they're interested in reading that story?

What would your letter say? I'm thinking about commenting, asking her whether pan/bisexual women can live a "lesbian life" in her eyes or if we're sullied by our potential attraction to the male sex, but I'm worried I'll get the kind of comment she posted above.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the books and the voting process this year.

[tetleythesecond]

Oh dear. Thank you for the links. I read the first two sentences of Die Liebe meiner Träume and admit that it's not as I thought it was. It's worse.

These books are the reasons I never even look at the book pages in the catalogue of my favourite mail-order purveyor of lesbian paraphernalia. Damn, this is not fit for commercial publication. It gives lesbian literature a bad name, and it lowers the standard because it seems that this kind of pulp is the standard by which other writers measure themselves (considering that the quality hasn't improved much in the last twenty years -- and look at Britain and the US in comparison!)

I have to think about that letter. Her strict demands and comment on lesbians vs. straight women gave me all sorts of ideas, but I might have to tone them down. (Like ask if it counts as a "Heterafantasie" if one of my characters uses a strap-on dildo, provided that it's not flesh-coloured, or how many testimonials I need to substantiate that I am, indeed, a lesbian. I won't do that, but if the rules for the next round are similar, I will say that I find the rules offensive, not conducive to high-quality entries, and that they fall far short of the current state of the art in lesbian literature and the debate on sexualities.)

I do see where she comes from with the Lesbe/Hetera dichotomy. I'm assuming she remembers the frustration many lesbians felt in the feminist movement of the seventies and the need to form their own identities among women. I also sympathise with the notion of not deconstructing the lesbian identity first when we deconstruct sexual identities (rather, I think it's heterosexuality that needs to be deconstructed, but I think we're on the same page there). BUT. The exclusive way she does it is discriminating, and it sets up boundaries that simply do not work. In pretending that there is such a thing as a straight vs. lesbian, she cements the notion of heterosexuality as much as that of the "lesbian", suggests that lesbian isn't an identity but an essential quality, and that there is a way for her to make out who is one of "us" and who isn't.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Right?! While I'm glad that lesbian literature exists I doubt that works like these are helping anyone. Or are we really so desperate that if it weren't for these, there wouldn't be any lesbian literature at all? The fact that she does seem to be able to sell them makes me wonder. They're so... I've seen Bastei Lübbe trash novels sold at train station kiosks that had better characters and writing.

When I first visited the gay library in the Magnus-Hirschfeld-Centrum in Hamburg I've been really disappointed in the sample of lesbian literature on display - they do have a fairly decent collection of all manner of novels and non-fiction works, but many of the ones in genres I find appealing were terrible and disappointing and in most cases I could think of several fanfics with similar themes that exceeded the quality of characterisation and writing of these works by far. I felt equally excited at discovering that Ms Gogoll's publishing house does a mail-order book-club flatrate-thing, but my excitement died pretty quickly when I read the blurbs and, in this lady's case, her godawful titles.

I'm excited about your letter-ideas. :D I've been wondering about how to prove your sexual identity, too, but maybe she has some sort of Gayger-counter that starts clicking when in the presence of a person who has reached "you have to be THIS gay to play"-levels. I also find it really hard to get my head around the need for this kind of dichotomy, and I can't say I understand this need for "righteous Gold Star converts Hetera"-narratives. Where's the appeal? Or does that only work if you're in non-reciprocated love with a heterosexual woman? Or is it a power-thing, winning someone with more privilege over to your POV? I don't see it.

I'm assuming she remembers the frustration many lesbians felt in the feminist movement of the seventies and the need to form their own identities among women.
Ah, I see. I have to say I failed to take her generation into consideration, what you say makes a lot of sense. I don't know much about these frustrations or the forms they take, but this might explain why I feel as though she's part of a completely different conversation than I am.

[tetleythesecond]

LOL@ the Gayger-counter.

Jokes aside, I really think it's a bit of a generational thing. I have my issues with many aspects and outgrowths of the old lesbian movement, but ever since I met many of the "fossils" (they sometimes call that themselves) I also understood more about why some of the things came about that many of us -- with hindsight and the luck of not having been born in the fifties and grown up in the seventies -- find so outrageous.

An example: I have a good friend who is sixty and has been around from the start of the lesbian movement. She said that they had had enough of demonstrating and fighting for the right to abort and equal rights in marriage but not getting any solidarity back because the "Heteras" tended not to want to be associated with the lesbians. And you still often find Berührungsängste. It isn't for nothing that some of our better-known feminists aren't out.

That still doesn't mean that I can't also have major issues with aspects of the lesbian movement of old, and also some of its contemporary currents. But usually it's nothing I can't freely (and heatedly) discuss with my favourite fossils. *g*

I can't say I understand this need for "righteous Gold Star converts Hetera"-narratives
Related to that: I do understand where it comes from. Like therealsnape said, lesbians in fiction always died or ended up lonely. The first vampire (Carmilla) was a lesbian (death by impaling, anyone?). Henry James's Olive Chancellor (as well-written a character as she is) lost her love to a man. Radclyffe Hall's dykes weren't exactly happy, and I just spoke to a friend yesterday about 1950s American lesbian pulp.

She: They usually end up in the swimming pool.
I: Well, that's nice.
She: I mean dead.

So yes, the need for an affirmative narrative was, and still is, there. I have friends who read that crap, simply because they crave stories about lesbians who do find love. The sad thing is that the standard in this country is so low, not least because the women's publishing houses have no quality standards whatsoever. I would not want my name on the cover of a book published by a woman who can't write so much as an opening sentence. And with all due and deserved respect and appreciation for the Müntefering family ... MM can't possibly have got that contract with Piper on account of her prose.

Or is it a power-thing, winning someone with more privilege over to your POV?
Not a power thing, I don't think. I rather think that the premise of those books is that the object of affection has an inner lesbian that she just hasn't liberated yet. And if you were to tackle the plot with some complexity, sensitivity, and acceptance, it still could make for a good story to show the fluidity of sexuality. You know, break up the notion of heterosexuality before you deconstruct the lesbians, who after all had to fight harder to assert their own existence. But it has to be better than reverse 1950s pulp.

[krakelwok.livejournal.com]

Happy End zwingend erforderlich? Hm.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Na, besser als die durchschnittlichen Enden von Romanen mit lesbischen Hauptfiguren, aber ich finde die ganzen Vorgaben auch etwas überzogen.

[krakelwok.livejournal.com]

Allerdings. Selbst wenn ich an dem Wettbewerb teilnehmen dürfte, würde ich mich dadurch viel zu gegängelt fühlen.

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

Oh mein Gott. Bist du grumpy weil du nicht teilnehmen darfst???

[krakelwok.livejournal.com]

Angesichts der vielen Romane, die ich schon geschrieben und der Unmengen Preise, die ich damit gewonnen habe?

Aber abgesehen davon bin ich doch immer grumpy. ;)

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

The dragon's privilege. :D

Wie jetzt, willst du etwa nicht deinen Bestseller "Unter der Haube mit 14" nochmal neu verlegen lassen? Oder dein Jugendwerk "Goldenes Haar vom Winde zerzaust"? Oder die neue Novelle, frisch aus der Schublade: "Liebesnächte unter Hochspannung"? Die Welt wird sie missen!!

[therealsnape.livejournal.com]

While I agree that 'zwingend' may be pushing it, I can actually see her point. There are quite enough books where the lesbian character suffers badly already.
Joanne Trollope's A Village Affair is a case in point. P.D. James latest offering, called, I think, The Private Patient is ghastly. Ruth Gogoll may be expressing a wish to see lesbian characters make it to the end of the story without death / violence / the misery of a break-up.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Yeah, among all the things that I take issue with the "happy end"-clause is the one I mind least. I tried to come up with books in which there are happy ends at all and didn't get very far, and I think it's good that someone is trying to be positive about "the lesbian experience" for once.

[tetleythesecond]

Ruth Gogoll may be expressing a wish to see lesbian characters make it to the end of the story without death / violence / the misery of a break-up.

I can sympathise with the basic idea, too, but knowing Ruth Gogoll and the other atrocities that get published on the German market, it still makes me cringe, and I think that what she is looking for is lesbian feel-good kitsch of the self-affirmative kind. And frankly, much of what I've read is no better than any "Heterafantasie" (whatever that may be) could possibly be -- only it's the other way round. The plots are variations on

1) Good Righteous Lesbian comes out, is disappointed by bisexual/straight/cowardly closeted woman and either gets sad or becomes a lonely wolf or finds love with another Good Righteous Lesbian.
2) Good Righteous Lesbian is out, falls in love with bisexual/straight/cowardly closeted woman and makes her See The Light.

Just write it as it comes into your mind, don't bother with complexity, don't even dare to consider complexity if you have a male character (they are foils, dammit!), and spice up your prose with a few nice adverbs. Never forget: metaphors are there for mixing! Moth gave a few informative links in her reply to me above.

(Sorry I'm getting so worked up about this. This may be far more than you want to read, but the abysmal state of German lesbian writing has been frustrating me for years. The identity-affirming stuff may have had its usefulness in the early days, but these days I find it unreflected and not far short of reactionary.)

[ysilme]

(sorry for deleting my first answer, got the wrong icon which would have mean my comment sounding totally different *blushes* )

... and I suppose that a woman who is not a "proven" lesbian will also be totally out of question for a submission to this contest, even if her writing will be exactly what is asked for...

[therealsnape.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for the background detail! Of course, an outsider such as myself shouldn't be commenting at all (I know nothing at all about German lesbian literature - it's not even a niche market here, or if it is, it's about as good a hiding place as niches get)

It's just that I always get highly annoyed at the 'lesbian character, ok, we'll have one, but it just can't go right with them - happiness is not an option. It very much goes for m/m pairings, too, in mainstream literature, but there at least they dare to use the word 'gay' instead of wasting half a page on not using the L-word.

And I'm a sucker for happy endings. But I had no idea things were that bad in the German market. Thanks for telling me!

[tetleythesecond]

Oh no, I absolutely didn't mean to imply that! I think that it's highly beneficial to get an unbiased perspective, and your comment also made clear to me that there's also the other way of looking at it -- namely that mainstream literature prefers its lesbians dead or at least depressed. You're absolutely right that more happy queer characters would be a gain for the world of literature; and it isn't for nothing that that's exactly what we're doing here on LJ. It's just that I'm so exasperated with this particular combination of self-congratulation and bi-/transphobia. Give me a good Sleeping Dragon over Die romantische Geschichte des tizianroten Traums meiner Liebe any time.

[therealsnape.livejournal.com]

You're a darling to count Sleeping Dragons among the things you like to read! And I'm really glad to get background info. No offense taken whatsoever, I'm just pleased that you bothered to give info!

[therealsnape.livejournal.com]

Die romantische Geschichte des tizianroten Traums meiner Liebe Don't quote titles like that to me. They might be an inspiraton ...

[tetleythesecond]

Sorry, honey, but that title is taken for my Beholder story. You could do Die tizianrote Liebe des romantischen Traums meiner Geschichte.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

There's also always (http://www.elles-shop.de/index.php?cPath=46&sort=2a&filter_id=10) Ich liebe und kämpfe um dich auf der Insel für zwei (I thought first-person-stories were a big huge No-Go? Eh).

[tetleythesecond]

L wie in der Hitze der Ostereier?

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I'm LOL'ing heartily at your descriptions of her uniplot, though I must say that her female characters aren't really much more complex than her male characters from what I can see. I've seen NPCs in role-playing campaigns that had more depth.

Also, did you know that she also gives people tips on how to write? Here's (http://www.elles.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=296:wir-schreiben-einen-fantasy-bestseller-1&catid=31:fantasy&Itemid=13) her advice on how to write a Fantasy novel. I'd love to get her take on how to create characters, but I couldn't find anything on her site. They really need some sort of tagging system on there.