And We Were Hungry Short Story Contest

I received an email from these nice folk asking me to give them a shout-out on the blog. While I can't vouch for them, I have no connection to the magazine or the competition, it does sound interesting, and with no entry fee and a large prize, I will leave it up to you to decide!

AndWeWereHungry, a new online arts & literary magazine, seeks literary prose (fiction, nonfiction and essay), poetry, photography and artwork for debut issue & calls for entries to its short story competition!

The debut issue and short story contest (four winners shall share a total prize fund of $5000), is sponsored by "Ashes & Snow" artist Gregory Colbert. Debut issue & contest submission theme or creative prompt is "And we were hungry. . . .," or more broadly, "HUNGER." For after all haven't we all experienced hunger? And isn't it, in the words of Ray Bradbury, that very "lack that gives us inspiration?"

Consideration for contest's top prize of $2000 is reserved for stories that connect the theme with nature. Contributors are encouraged to otherwise freely interpret the theme. Submission deadline is March 31, 2013. Submission Guidelines, more info and themes & deadlines for future issues are found at http://andwewerehungry.org. While there are no contest entry or submissions reading fees, we are not a paying market at this time.

Short Stories that Help

Two points about short stories today. I wanted to draw your attention to an excellent comment on the previous post by Hayley who mentioned that when depression left her unable to focus for long enough to read novels, short stories were recommended to her by a counsellor (Alice Munro was the first) and she has read them ever since. Has anyone else had this experience?

The second is how short stories can help in another way - the wonderful Metazen online lit 'zine is having a short story & poetry contest which is raising money for Somalian Drought Relief Effort (via East Africa Drought Relief Fund).Here are the details:

We will accept submissions with an accompanying fee throughout the month of August. All submissions will be considered and a winner and 3 runners up will be selected by our judges. Winners and runners up will get prizes. Yes.

So…you get to write, you get to win stuff and you also get to help support a cause. There is really no downside. Even if you lose, your karma will increase.

Please submit either one piece of fiction (limit 2500 words) or poetry (limit 2 poems).
There is no theme, we’re looking for something you’re proud of. Nothing filthy, nothing milfy, nothing too pithy. A little pith is okay. Not too much. Pith-ish.
Timeline: All submissions sent between July 24th and August 31st with corresponding paypal entry fee will be considered.

And here's what you can win:

First Place:

Publication on metazen.ca with accompanying commentary on your piece
10% of entry fees from contest
1 Copy of Frank Hinton’s “I Don’t Respect Female Expression” print and digital
1 DVD “MDMA” by MDMA Films

Runner Up (3 winners):

Publication on metazen.ca
(1) of the following:

- Fog Gorgeous Stag by Sean Lovelace
- Grease Stains, Kistmet, And Maternal Wisdom by Mel Bosworth
- Download Helvetica For Free . Com by Steve Roggenbuck

Get to it! Full instructions here.

A short short story contest - win books!

I was delighted when Red Room, the wonderful site for authors, asked if I would give away three copies of my book as part of the prizes for their first short short story contest for Red Room authors. Here are the details, if you're a Red Room member, why not enter?

This week, Red Room author Robert Olen Butler, who won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for his collection of short stories, A Good Scent from Strange Mountain, will guest judge a short story contest for us. So write a short story and post it on your blog this week. There's no entry fee or run to the post office involved. Everyone will get to enjoy reading your story whether you win or not, since you enter by posting it on your blog. (For contest rules, please see below.)

Our esteemed guest judge, who will select a first, second, and a third place winner, has published eleven novels and five volumes of short fiction. The magazine Short Story recently published a retrospective of his work, which led him to unearth "Moving Day," his first published short story, which appeared in Redbook in 1974. His most recent novel is Hell, just released in paperback. It's a comic fantasy about a news reporter who dies and finds himself still delivering the evening news, this time in Hell.

Definitions of a "short story" include "fiction less than 10,000 words," "a brief, highly unified piece of fictional narrative," and "an essay written under the guise of fiction to protect the writer's family." Many literary journals and contests prefer 3,000 to 5,000 words for submissions.

We're calling this Red Room's "Scandalously Short Story Contest" because the word limit is only 1,000 words. That's something someone like Joyce Maynard could write in an hour but we'll give you two days to write, edit, and post it. When you're done, you might say: "It's so short, I can't believe it's a story!"

We hope you'll participate. The first prize winner gets a trophy mailed to them. (Yes, an actual trophy!)

The first-, second-, and third-place winners will each receive a set of three books by Red Room authors. Margo Berdeshevsky's Beautiful Soon Enough (2009) is a collection that captures the lives of twenty-three arresting women. Robert Olen Butler called it a "thrillingly cutting-edge work of photos and short short stories flowing together." Tania Hershman founded The Short Review, a short-story collection review website. Her debut collection, The White Road and Other Stories, was published in 2008 by Salt Publishing. N. M. Kelby writes both nonfiction writers guides and fiction; her most recent book, 2009's ATravel Guide for Restless Hearts, collects stories "for those of us who suddenly find ourselves tourists in our own lives."As always, we'll feature all winners and other notable entries on the homepage the following week.

So post your scandalously short story contest entry as a blog entry today

For help on how to blog, please see the directions here. We'll choose one of these blog posts to be featured on Red Room's homepage next week. Post your entry by Friday at 10:30 a.m. PDT (GMT-08:00).

Contest Rules: Only Red Room authors and members who joined before October 6^th, 2010, are eligible. Entries will only be considered if posted on your Red Room blog by the deadline of Friday, October 8, 2010, at 10:30 a.m. PDT (GMT-0:8:00), and tagged correctly with the keyword term "short story contest" in the Blog Keyword Tags field so we can find it. (Please don't forget the tag. For more information about tags, click here.). Please do NOT post the story as any other content type (such as "story, article, or poem"). You must enter it as a blog entry or it will not be considered. Judging is at the sole discretion of Red Room. Your entry must consist of a short story that is 1,000 words or less. Email us if you have questions or need help with the contest.