One of the year’s most fun short story contests is almost coming to an end. The deadline is now just a few days away.
The challenge: Write a 50 paragraph short story, with the first and last paragraphs provided by the contest host.
Hosted by Owl Canyon Press, this is their third “Hackathon” short story contest.
They are offering $6,000 in prizes:
- $3,000 First Place
- $2,000 Second Place
- $1,000 Third Place
In addition to the prizes, twenty four of the entrants will be published in an anthology of stories from the contest.
According to their call for submissions:
In 2016 a small group of writers was presented with an informal short story challenge — given an opening and closing paragraph, craft an original short story connecting the two.
The challenge ultimately resulted in one of the short stories growing into the novel Dog Logic, which went on to win a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Silver Award for Science Fiction, a Bronze Award for Literary Fiction from Readers’ Favorites, and selected as a National Indie Excellence Awards Finalist for Contemporary Fiction.
The success of the first challenge motivated the launch of the 2018 Owl Canyon Press short story Hackathons #1 and #2 which were such smashing successes that we’re doing it again in 2019 for Short Story Hackathon #3!
The deadline to enter the contest is September 30th, 2019.
To learn more, read their contest page here.
