20 June 2012 – Today is Short Story Day and there are a whole range of activities and competitions to take part in.
Image courtesy Carolina Matsubara
The International Chain Story Challenge is happening: 5 teams, 5 stories, 1 winner! You decide who gets international bragging rights. Click on the team to follow their story. Vote for your favourite story on twitter or facebook #(team name) or in a comment below the story.
Comma Press (United Kingdom) #commapress
The Book Lounge (Cape Town – South Africa) #booklounge
Love Books (Johannesburg – South Africa) #lovebooks
The Yoza Mobi YA Gang (Africa) #yoza
The Sextet Pen (Africa) #sextetpen
Some of the competitions:
- You can win an online workshop with the facilitators of the Caine Prize for African Writing Workshop, Jamal Mahjoub and Henrietta Rose-Innes. Write a story of no more than 500 words on creatures creepy and crawly, in honour of Henrietta’s Sunday Times Fiction Award shortlisting for her novel, Ninevah. See competition guidelines here.
- The Fiction Flash. Win R250 voucher. Write a story in 10 words or less @shortstoryAFR . Accepting entries until 20 June 2012, Short Story Day.
- Allaboutwriting 250 Word Short Story Challenge. Here’s a challenge to your ability to rethink, and, perhaps, reinterpret a story from another character’s point of view. We’ve taken our inspiration for the scenario from Hitchcock’s wonderful movie: Rear Window. Deadline midnight 20 June. Winner receives a R200(or equivalent) book voucher from the independent bookshop of their choice.
- A Part of the Story explores the intersection between story, photography and imagination. Writers email in and receive a photo. They then write a piece of fiction to go along with the image. It may directly include or take place at the location in the photo (be it room or countryside), use an item in the photo to start a story or simply inspire an abstract idea. Minimum 35 words, absolute max 350.
- And then we, Allaboutwriting, are running an online Flickr competition that works in the reverse of A Part of a Story. We invite you to share an image inspired by one of the following three word-themes:
• Half-formed desires…
• An unwelcome knock on the door…
• A moonlit procession…
Share your images with us in the Allaboutwriting Flickr group with your chosen word-theme in the title by July 1 and you could win an online Power of Writing Course.
