Category Archives: Contests

Contest: Italy short stories

Posted on April 7, 2007 by Keren

Jo writes:

I’m looking for short stories connected to Italy in some way. You’re story could be based in Italy or have Italian people in it. Use you’re imagination. As long as it has a connection with Italy it’s valid. The genre is up to you but please keep it clean. No swearing, explicit violence etc…

Stories should be between 500 and 1500 words in length and may be used in a future anthology.

Deadline for submissions is 30th April 2007. Please send your submission to jo_bins@yahoo.com with ‘short story contest’ in the subject line.

Link (via kate blogs about writing)

Posted in Contests, Short stories |

Far Horizons Fiction Contest

Posted on April 5, 2007 by Kimberly Dawn Wells

Are you a short story enthusiast? The Far Horizons Fiction Contest is looking for unpublished short stories of up to 3500 words for their contest.

The contest fee is $25 USD ($30 CAD) and includes a one-year subscription to the Malahat Review. Entrants should choose one of the three themes listed to the left of the photo on the entry info page, and have their entry postmarked or due (if sent electronically) by May 1st, 2007.

The winner will receive $500 and publication.
Title: Far Horizons Fiction Contest
Award: $500 and publication in print, on the web, and in an electronic newsletter
Deadline: May 1st, 2007
More Details: http://web.uvic.ca/malahat/farhorizonsfiction.htm

Posted in Contests, Short stories |

Prize announced for slavery poems

Posted on April 4, 2007 by Keren

A competition to find a poem marking the bicentenary of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade has been launched today. The winning poem, on the theme of enslavement, will be published as the 12th and final instalment of a series of poems commissioned by the Arts Council.

“The Arts Council hopes this competition will inspire both known and new poets to add to a powerful tradition,” he said.

This competition is open only to poets who have yet to publish a full-length collection. The winner of the competition will see their work published alongside the 11 commissioned poems and receive a prize of £500. The closing date for the competition is September 28 2007.

Link to the Guardian article; for further information click here.

Posted in Contests, Poetry |

Hugo Award nominees announced

Posted on March 29, 2007 by Keren

The nominees for 2007′s Hugo Award (also known as the Science Fiction Achievement Award), one of the top science fiction and fantasy awards of the year, has been announced.  The winners will be elected and announced at this year’s Worldcon in Yokohama, Japan this September.
Here are the nominees in some of the main categories:

Novel
Michael F. Flynn, Eifelheim (Tor)
Naomi Novik, His Majesty’s Dragon (Del Rey; also, Voyager, 1/06, as Temeraire)
Charles Stross, Glasshouse (Ace)
Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End (Tor)
Peter Watts, Blindsight (Tor)

Novella
“The Walls of the Universe” by Paul Melko (Asimov’s, April/May 2006)
“A Billion Eyes” by Robert Reed (Asimov’s, October/November 2006)
“Inclination” by William Shunn (Asimov’s, April/May 2006)
“Lord Weary’s Empire” by Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s, December 2006)
Julian: A Christmas Story by Robert Charles Wilson (PS Publishing)

Novelette
“Yellow Card Man” by Paolo Bacigalupi (Asimov’s, December 2006)
“Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth” by Michael F. Flynn (Asimov’s, December 2006)
“The Djinn’s Wife” by Ian McDonald (Asimov’s, July 2006)
“All the Things You Are” by Mike Resnick (Jim Baen’s Universe, October 2006)
“Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter” by Geoff Ryman (F&SF, October/November 2006)

Short Story
“How to Talk to Girls at Parties” by Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things, William Morrow)
“Kin” by Bruce McAllister (Asimov’s, February 2006)
“Impossible Dreams” by Timothy Pratt (Asimov’s, July 2006)
“Eight Episodes” by Robert Reed (Asimov’s, June 2006)
“The House Beyond Your Sky” by Benjamin Rosenbaum (Strange Horizons, September 2006)

Link (via BoingBoing)

Posted in Awards, Contests, Reading, Science fiction/fantasy |

Poetry workshop: dramatic poetry –UPDATE: Results

Posted on March 29, 2007 by Keren

Poet and translator Sasha Dugdale presides over this month’s poetry workshop at the Guardian. This time, readers are challenged to submit a dramatic poem.

I would like to encourage readers to try writing and submitting a dramatic poem.

Dramatic poetry is poetry in which a character or characters discuss a situation. It can be monologue or dialogue. The important thing is that the poet assumes the speech patterns, interests and personality of his characters when writing the poem.

Email your entries, with ‘Poetry workshop’ in the title field, to books.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk by midnight on Wednesday March 21. The shortlisted poems, and Sasha’s responses, will appear on the site soon afterwards.

Read the rest of the instructions here.

Update: Read the poems that made the workshop’s shortlist, along with Dugdale’s comments and reviews. Some interesting works here.

Posted in Articles, Authors, Contests, Poetry, Resources, Workshops |

The Strongest Start Novel Competition

Posted on March 28, 2007 by Kimberly Dawn Wells

Is the best part of your book usually the beginning? Do hooks just pop into your brain on a regular basis? Can you write one heck of a summary? If so, The Strongest Start Novel Competition might be right for you.

Booksie.com and TheNextBigWriter.com are looking for strong opening chapters that grab a reader’s interest, glue them to the pages, and don’t let go until we find out what happens next. You don’t even need to write the whole book – you need just the first three chapters for the contest! (You won’t be required to finish the book.)

If you win, you’ll receive a combination of cash and a membership to TheNextBigWriter Online Writing Workshop. The first place winner will receive a lengthy critique from the three judges.

The deadline for the first three chapters is May 3rd. Visit their website for more information and to get started.

Title: The Strongest Start Novel Competition
Award: Combinations of cash, website membership, and a critique of your work
Deadline: May 3rd, 2007
More Details: http://www.booksie.com/competition/novel_competition.html

Posted in Contests |

Win a trip to the Nebula awards

Posted on March 20, 2007 by Keren

AbeBooks is offering speculative fiction fans a chance to win tickets to this year’s Nebula awards. The Nebulas are one of the biggest speculative fiction events of the year, and they’re a great chance to hear and meet authors and publishers in the SF business.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and AbeBooks.com have teamed up to give a pair of lucky speculative fiction fans the chance to attend the Nebula Awards ceremony and banquet on May 11-12 2007 in New York. The Nebulas acclaim the best science fiction / fantasy fiction published in the United States during the two previous years.

Anyone interested in buying tickets or getting more information about the event can do so at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website www.sfwa.org . However, you can win a pair of tickets (each worth $125) to the awards ceremony and banquet plus a two-night stay in the Marriott New York where the event is being stayed. Just answer this simple question:

Who was awarded the Nebula for “Best Novel” last year (2006) in Tempe Arizona?

Know the answer (or got Google)? Enter to win here (via Futurismic).  US and Canada residents only, unfortunately.

Posted in Awards, Contests, Events, Science fiction/fantasy |

Readers "can't live without" classics

Posted on March 1, 2007 by Keren

Worldbookday.com conducted a survey of books people can’t live without.  Here are the results:

The top ten are as follows:

1) Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 20%
2) Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkein 17%
3) Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 14%
4) Harry Potter books – J K Rowling 12%
5) To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee 9.5%
6) The Bible 9%
7) Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8.5% 8) 1984 – George Orwell 6%
= His Dark Materials  – Philip Pullman 6%
10) Great Expectations – Charles Dickens .55%

The full list and a breakdown by region are available here (pdf).
The Guardian says:

Richard and Judy’s television show, legendary for creating bestsellers, appears to have little influence on this list. Virtually none of the chart-topping titles of recent years, except for Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, and no high-grossing celebrity biographies reached the top 100.

Instead, the top 100 bristles with provenly enduring quality, from Joseph Heller, George Eliot, Tolstoy, Kerouac, Lewis Carroll and AA Milne to John Steinbeck, Arthur Ransome, Joseph Conrad, Kazuo Ishiguro (for The Remains of the Day) and Conan Doyle. The last three titles to squeeze in are a characteristic mix: Hamlet, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

Posted in Articles, Authors, Contests, Reading |

Economist to chair 2007 Booker jury

Posted on February 25, 2007 by Keren

The director of the London School of Economics, Howard Davies, will chair the judges of the 39th Man Booker prize.

He will be joined on the panel for the 2007 award by the poet Wendy Cope, the journalist and novelist Giles Foden, the biographer Ruth Scurr and the actor Imogen Stubbs.

The competition is already showing the benefits of putting an economist at the helm. The longlist, which has ballooned to around 20 books over recent years, will be cut down this year to just 12 books. An announcement is expected in August.

The shortlist of six titles will be announced in early September. The winner of the 2007 prize will be announced on October 16.

Link to the Guardian article.

Posted in Articles, Awards, Contests |

Guardian teams up with Ziji and Bebo for a nanotale contest

Posted on February 24, 2007 by Heidi Kathleen

Itching for a chance to see your writing in print, but not quite finished with your three-part fantasy novel of epic proportions?

This could be the contest for you.

We’ve teamed up with Ziji publishing and Bebo.com to give you the chance to see one of your short stories in print. All you have to do is send us a story of less than 1,000 words before March 16 2007.

Information and links can be found here.

Posted in Contests, Short stories |