My entire family got sick and I won a trip to Ireland

The Hearsay International Audio Arts Festival is a biennial event in Kilfinane, Ireland.

To help promote the festival they have a set of awards with categories like Best Sound Art and Best Fiction.

I’m ecstatic to share news that the piece I entered, ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ has won the Best True Story category[!]

The story was a joint winner alongside UK producer Andrea Rangecroft. See the full list of winners here.

It’s a big honour to win because it’s judged by some of the best radio heads from around the world including, Julie Shapiro [Radiotopia], Kaitlin Prest [The Heart] and Eleanor McDowall [Falling Tree], to name a few.

But the other extremely exciting thing, is the prize for winning is a trip to Kilfinane, Ireland, to attend the festival[!!]

I’m stoked, to say the least, still in a bit of shock. Come late September the Guinness will definitely be on me!

So where’s the story?

I made it especially for the competition under their ‘Create’ stream, so it hasn’t been broadcast anywhere yet. As the name suggests, it’s definitely a Christmas story, so maybe The Real Thing will run it in December.

I don’t want to spoil it, but I can tell you it’s a true story about the time my entire family got sick.

It was made in the same style I produced a story in 2010 about a family holiday that went horribly wrong; no narration, lots of interviews, cut up into single sentences that bounce off each other. It’s a ‘kaleidoscope’ structure where you’re looking at one thing, but the perception keeps twisting.

The effect is that sometimes the characters and information gel together, other times it juxtaposes in funny ways. Memory and truth don’t always see eye to eye.

Anyway, I’ll post it here when it goes up.

Update: listen to the story here.