As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been inundated with a few contest entries of late. As a general rule, I don’t enter a lot of writing contests, or rather, I’m quite picky about the ones I do enter.* Just as with submitting work anywhere, I chose to research and think about what I’m sending out rather than carpet-bombing every magazine/website that takes submissions. I don’t really know which strategy works best, but I karmically prefer it when I see a contest (or call for submissions), check it out and immediate go, “Geez, (blank) would be perfect for this.”

As such, this allows me to get to know more intimately the contests, publications and readers that I’m sending my stuff too. This last batch was particularly awesome:

• Opium Magazine 7-line Contest: This is one of my favorite contests I’ve entered in recent history. The folks at Opium Magazine offered $1,000 for the best seven-line story (or poem). The constraint of trying to tell a tale in just a few lines was too awesome to pass up. Originally, I had a few pieces already written that I’d planned on submitting, but ended up writing a couple of new ones specifically for the contest – then agonized on which two to send. Ended up going with one old piece and one new one. The whole process was quite fun, and I’d recommend trying out a seven-line to anyone interested in changing up their writing brain for a day, or just as an exercise to get the juices flowing. Added bonus was that this contest is going to be judged by Brian Evenson who taught at the Naropa Summer Writing Program when I was there. Evenson’s work, particularly Dark Property and Altmann’s Tongue are the kind of thing that keeps me up at night, shivering not only at the power of his story, but the power of his writing abilities.

• Seán Ó Faoláin Prize: I’ll admit with this one I don’t have as much experience with this contest or the Munster Literature Centre, although obviously this prize is named after the Irish short story writer Seán Ó Faoláin. Honestly, the opportunity to win a competition in Ireland (with the possibility of a trip there) was too much to pass up. That said, I note that the Munster Literature Centre’s most prestigious prize (and the world’s largest prize for a short story collection), the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award went to Jhumpa Lahiri this year for her collection Unaccustomed Earth and couldn’t imagine a better choice of someone working in short fiction. Lahiri’s novel The Namesake is a must read (I haven’t seen the movie adaptation of the novel, but have gotten mixed reviews). The Namesake is a poignant look at what it’s like to be a person of color in the US and the struggles of assimilating cultures and identity in modern times. Given my own struggles with this theme, I found Lahiri’s novel thoroughly amazing.

• Wordstock Festival: From Ireland to my own backyard, I managed to get out both of these applications on the same day. People from the Portland and Oregon region understand how cool the annual Wordstock Festival is. Authors and literati from around the world come for a three-day weekend of discussions, readings, workshops and a book fair. This year’s short fiction contest will be judged by Portland’s own Ursula K. LeGuin.

* Although since “stepping up” my writing career this summer, when I quit my job, I’ve been sending a bunch more out lately.

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