My Favourite Female Contest: The Winners

I’m sure those of you who participated in our My Favourite Female contest and others as well, are waiting for the results; here they are! The best written entry award a.k.a first prize goes to Amodini, who picked Mma Ramotswe of the No. 1 Ladies Detective agency series as her favourite character.

Short excerpt from Amodini’s entry: In Precious Ramotswe, the author, Alexander McCall Smith has succeeded in creating what I call a truly human character. Mma Ramotswe appears real; a real-life walking-talking person, with a heart and a brain and a mind of her own, a set of convictions, her very own beliefs, a value system on which she relies, and the capacity to negotiate the vagaries of daily life and fickle human nature with patience and an enviable composure. In other words, just like the rest of us; only better.

As decided, we’re giving two second prizes, and these go to Starry, who wrote about Anne of Green Gables and Ankita Prasad, who chose Lisbeth Salander of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium series. Ankita sent her entry via mail and we will be publishing it here soon, with the other entries. (Incidentally, Starry also won a prize at our first Mommy Guilt contest!)

And one from Ankita’s: As a techie who lives and breaths a world which has a low female to male ratio, the fact that  Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander is an expert hacker tickled me pink. In a society were (sic) women are  expected to toe societal norms to a larger extent than men do, it was a pleasure to read about a girl who always dealt with society on her own terms, without giving an inch. 

Amodini will receive a Rs. 500 Flipkart/$10 Amazon voucher while Starry and Ankita will receive Rs.250 Flipkart/$5 Amazon vouchers. While there are only 3 prize-winners, we received a number of amazingly well written entries, and shortlisting from the over 25 entries received was a tough task! (Sadly, we had to omit some otherwise well written entries because they went over the 500 words limit). It was also interesting to note how many ‘children’s heroines’ made it to the list – Enid Blyton’s ‘Naughtiest girl Elizabeth Allen’ and tomboy George among them. With the contestants’ permission, I hope to publish some of these as well here. 

Many thanks to our judges Devaki Khanna, Freelance Writer and Editor and Nivethitha Kumar, Co-Founder of literary e-zine The Banyan Trees. 

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