Try your skills in the 2020 Short Story Challenge

NYCMidnight has announced its fourteenth Short Story Challenge. The annual competition is open to writers around the world.  The entry fee for this year is USD$48 by the early deadline of December 12, 2019, and USD$58 until the final entry deadline of January 16, 2020. There are thousands in cash and prizes for the winners,  the organizers say.

This year, there are 4 rounds of competition this year. In the first round (January 17-25, 2020), writers are placed in heats and are assigned a genre, subject, and character assignment.  Writers have 8 days to write an original story no longer than 2,500 words. 

The judges choose a top 5 in each heat to advance to the second round (April 2-5, 2020) where writers receive new assignments, only this time they have 3 days to write a 2,000 word (maximum) short story. 

The judges again choose a top 5 in each heat to advance to the 3rd Round (May 15-17, 2020) where writers receive new assignments and have 2 days to write a 1,500 word (maximum) short story. 

Judges select finalists and the remaining writers are challenged to write a 1,250 word (maximum) story in just 24 hours (June 19-20, 2020) in the fourth and final round of the competition.  Feedback from the judges is provided for every submission. Click here for more information.

(Photo courtesy of La Marchande de Soleils, a love story for children, about a young and poor newspaper seller girl and a glamorous singer and his Talisman that always tells the truth.)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vitabu features the memorable sixth chapter of Bakar Mansaray's new book

Image
Bakar Mansaray, the founder of the Mandingo Scrolls blog and winner of the 2017 Writer-of-the-Year, Afro-Canadian Heroes Award, is known for his riveting short stories and tales of life in his native Sierra Leone. In his new book, My Afro-Canadian Chronicle , published by Sierra Leonean Writers Series, the author sheds a personal light on the devastating effects of underdevelopment on a country that went through one of the most atrocious civil wars in modern history. "For those who have read books of literature, history and anthropology from Sierra Leone and yet harbour the sinking feeling that there had to be a missing link between narratives, Bakar’s book provides that missing link to complete the national narrative," writes novelist and poet Oumar Farouk Sesay in the Foreword. "This autobiography is a portrait painted on a canvas of memory in vivid and sometimes dark hues, telling a story only a mind as lucid as the author’s can tell. This excerpt was used wi
Read more

Summer hangout with Pede Hollist's So the Path Does Not Die

Image
Pede Hollist, a native of Sierra Leone, is an associate professor of English at The University of Tampa, Florida. His interests cover the literature of the African imagination—literary expressions in the African continent as well as in the African Diaspora. So the Path Does not Die is his first novel.  His short story "‘Foreign Aid" was on the shortlist for the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing. Vitabu : I found So the Path Does Not Die a remarkable book. The story travels from a graphic, mystical past to the present time, through almost impossible and sometimes hidden cultural, social and economic issues. How did you come up with the idea for the Musudugu chaper? Pede Hollist: Among the Kuranko, Musudugu refers to a woman’s dwelling, but it also describes a mythical place where only women lived, happily and in sisterhood.  The story of Kumba Kargbo’s confrontation with the elders of Musudugu suggests that the conflict between old and new ways and the tension betw
Read more

Susan's Bay, Freetown, Sierra Leone

Image
An undated aerial photo of Susan's Bay, Freetown by Wallin Eleazar Riebel of Otterbein University. The postcard was digitized in March 2006 and the digital publisher is the Otterbein University Library. The original photo is stored in the repository of the Otterbein University Library Archives. Postcard captioned, "Susan's Bay, Sierra Leone." Aerial view, looking inland. ( Susan's Bay, Freetown, Sierra Leone ) On Wednesday, March 24, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr Mayor of Freetown wrote on Facebook :  "J ust left the scene of a terrible fire at Susan’s Bay. The entire community has been burnt to the ground. Thousands are affected. We won’t know the full scale of the disaster until tomorrow when we conduct an assessment with NDMA and other partners. Many children are missing, separated from their parents in the chaos. Twelve children were at the FSU at Eastern Police station. We understand that other children might have boarded boats moored on the wharf. Devastating to w
Read more