KUCHING – Swinburne’s mechanical engineering student Govind Anil Nair’s short stories won him both first and second place in the 2nd Wildlife Conservation Swinburne Sarawak English Microfiction Challenge held at the university’s campus.
The Microfiction Challenge is a flash fiction short story writing competition that aimed to inspire students in Malaysia to think critically about challenges in conservation and to address these issues via creative writing in English.
It was jointly organised by the Wildlife Conservation Society Malaysia Program (WCS Malaysia) and Swinburne, and supported by the US Embassy. The Embassy is a partner of both organisations in running several conservation-based English workshops with the Fulbright English Teaching Assistants and English teachers from all over Malaysia.
The five-day challenge kicked off with the release of the first daily prompt on the challenge website at 9am on 12 November 2018. A new prompt was revealed each day where students were required to come up with short stories of less than 500 words, weaving conservation tales based on the given prompt.
This year, the competition received 118 submissions from 48 aspiring writers from different parts of the country. They participated in the challenge that was categorised into three different age groups namely Category A for ages 13 to 15 years, Category B for ages 16 to 17 years, and Category C for ages 18 to 24 years.
There were daily winners and two recipients of honourable mention in each category. The overall champion was awarded RM800 and a certificate, while the first runner-up and second runner-up received RM500 and RM300 cash prizes and certificates respectively.
In Category C, Govind won first and second place for his stories ‘Over the Years’ and ‘Fair Game’ while Jasmine Fong Chui Hsia’s ‘Decay’ won third place in the same category.
In Category B, Alyssa Yap’s ‘Melodies of Decay’ and ‘Seeds of Hope’ won both first and second place while Nurul Hazzwanie bt Mohammad Muzzani’s ‘Daffodil, the Flower of a New Beginning’ was placed third.
Evelyn Ringkai’s ‘Queen of the Night’ won first place for Category A while Asyiqin Zailani’s ‘Life of a Bear’ and Dylan Wong Yun Xian’s ‘A Losing Battle’ were placed second and third respectively.
Govind previously won in both creative writing and essay writing competitions organised by Swinburne and Nottingham University Malaysia Campus during his undergraduate studies. Govind was also involved in debate competitions and Model United Nations conferences in the past.
According to Swinburne’s School of Foundation Studies senior lecturer and co-organiser Christina Yin, all the young participants did very well as it is no easy feat to write a short story in less than 500 words based on a one-word prompt and an environmental theme within 24 hours.
“We hope that our youngsters in school and university will continue to use their creativity and imagination to engage readers of all ages, as well as to inspire many to live more environmentally-friendly lives,” said Yin.
Meanwhile, Director of WCS Malaysia Dr Melvin Gumal remarked that conservation is a most complex task and requires support from people of all ages as well as disciplines.
“We need to engage with young writers as they are and will be the voices of conservation in the future. Nurturing their potential is therefore, vitally important for all,” he added.
All winning entries and honourable mentions can be viewed on the challenge website at http://wildlifemicrofiction.com/.