The Literary Lab authors invite fiction writers to submit your 1 to 2,000-word short stories to us. The contest deadline is December 1, 2009 at 11:59 p.m. PST, and they plan to announce the winners on January 7, 2010, which marks the Literary Lab's 1st anniversary.
With Genre Wars, they want to celebrate all genres of writing. So, whether you write science-fiction/fantasy, horror/crime, literary, romance, children's literature/middle grade/young adult, or experimental, send in your work!
Write something new. Send something old. Polish something up. If you've never written a short story before, now's your chance to try it out!
Prizes
20-30 special selections will be chosen for inclusion in the 1st Genre Wars Anthology. All of the profits from this print-on-demand publication will be donated to a writing/reading non-profit organization that will be announced in the future.
6 genre class winners will be selected, one from each of the genres listed above (assuming they have entries in all genres). Each of these stories will be posted on their blog, followed by an author interview. Each winner will also receive a $10 gift card to a book store of their choice.
1 overall winner will be selected from the genre class winners. In addition to the prizes listed above, this writer will receive an additional $50 gift card to the book store of their choice.
Contest Guidelines
1. E-mail your 1 to 2,000-word short story to LiteraryLab@gmail.com before December 1, 2009 at 11:59 p.m. PST. Paste the work in the body of the e-mail with breaks between paragraphs (hit return twice). They will be reading all submissions blind, thanks to a kind volunteer who will send them the entries with all names removed. No attachments will be opened.
2. In your e-mail subject line type GENRE WARS ENTRY. In the body of the email include your name, the title of your work, word count, and which genre category you'd like to compete in: 1. science fiction/fantasy, 2. horror/crime, 3. literary, 4. romance, 5. children's literature/middle grade/young adult, or 6. experimental--yes, you have to pick one.
3. Works must be previously unpublished, and we ask for the rights to post the winning stories online and/or in print in the anthology. Afterwards, you are free to include the story in your own collections or as a reprint in another anthology.
Judging
The judges for this contest will be the Literary Lab co-authors: Michelle Davidson Argyle, Scott G. F. Bailey, and Davin Malasarn.
Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Well, hop to it! Write that short story you've always dreamed about writing. Not always dreamed about writing a short story? Write one anyway! And good luck to all the entrants. :)
Great idea--thanks for posting this!
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot for mentioning the contest, Robyn! I really appreciate it!
ReplyDeleteIt does sound great! If I wrote short stories... LOL But maybe I'll try.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting!
Angela, I think it's a great idea too. :)
ReplyDeleteSusan, You thinking of entering? :)
Davin, You're welcome. Of course I'm going to mention it. :)
Jessica, Try! I think I'll enter a picture book. :) Just for the fun of it.
This sounds great. I've had an idea bouncing around and this may just get me going.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments! Sorry it's taken me so long to comment back - I took it into my head to finish the third draft of my novel this past week end and was writing like crazy to get it done. :D
ReplyDeleteI saw on your web site that you did NaNoWriMo once. Are you planning on doing it again this year? I participated in it for the first time last year, and finished with 50,030 words in my novel, Audra. (It's named for the main character.) I'm going to do it again this year, either with a story about a nymph or a story about a troupe of gypsies. I have been wanting to write both for over a year, so I can't decide.
Speaking of Audra, I had a question. See, I'm going to let my novel sit for a while now that third draft is done - probably till December - and then I'm going to edit it. Once that is done I'm going to start querrying agents, so I thought that now would be a good time to start working on my querry letter. The plot of my novel is not very interesting without the characters - they make the whole story - so in my querry I'm going to focus on the characters more than the plot. My question is, you said taht of what you read you really liked Audra, but what was it exactly that made you like her so quickly? I'm really curious because what ever it is could probably help me while writing the querry. If you could just comment on my blog and let me know that'd be great! :)
~ Katherine Anne