Ink-slingers: On your marks! It's the Wordstock Short Fiction Competition

Wordstock, Portland's annual festival of writers, books, and storytelling, is pleased to announce the call for submissions for the 3rd Wordstock Short Fiction Competition.

The national contest is a “double blind” competition. The judges, a collection of writers, academics, publishers, bookstore owners, and literary critics, will choose 10 finalists. The winner of the competition receives a first prize of $1,000 and publication in the October 2009 issue of Portland Monthly magazine. All 10 finalists' stories will be published in the Wordstock Ten, an anthology that will be available at the festival, at Portland-area bookstores, and online through the Wordstock website. Every writer who enters the competition will receive a copy of the anthology.

The final judge for this year’s competition will be Oregon essayist, author, and short-story writer Barry Lopez. Mr. Lopez is a recipient of the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the John Hay Medal, fellowships from the Guggenheim, Lannan, and National Science Foundations, and many other honors, including the National Book Award.

Submission guidelines
- All short stories must be works of fiction written in English
- Stories must be an original work and not previously published
- The entry fee is $25 per short story entry
- There are no genre restrictions
- Manuscripts are to be typed, double-spaced, on 8.5” x 11” paper
- Stories should be no less than 1,500 and no more than 4,000 words
- Each submission must have a cover sheet with the writer’s contact information—do not put this information on the manuscript.
- No manuscript will be returned
- Entries that do not follow these guidelines will be disqualified

Submit your entry by mail to:
Wordstock short fiction competition
C/o Franklin, Beedle & Assoc.
8536 SW St Helens Dr., Suite D
Wilsonville, OR 97070.

Please make your entry fee check payable to Wordstock. All entries must be postmarked by July 1, 2009.

Last year's competition drew over 300 entries from all over the world. The 1st place winner, Kurt Rheinheimer of Roanoke, Virginia, won $1,000 and had his story, "Calendar Girl Arrested, Freed" published in the December 2009 issue of Portland Monthly.

See what all the fuss is about and visit this information at the Wordstock website.