Short Story Competition 2009

Please vote for the story you like best to determine the winner of Literature Network Short Story Competition 2009.

Discussion of the stories, to avoid influencing the outcome of the poll, are not allowed.

If contributers would like to ask questions, they should email us at litnetcompetition@hotmail.co.uk.

Please note that the authors agree to keep their identities secret when they enter the competition.

Those who breech this rule will be disqualified automatically.

Good luck, everyone!

Competition Rules

he Literature Network will hold an annual short story competition, which will be open to all its members. The rules of the competition are:

1. The stories should be submitted as email attachments in MS Word format and should be minimum 500 and maximum 2000 words and include your Forum names as well. Please send your stories to litnetcompetition@hotmail.co.uk. Please do not post your stories on the Forum!

2. There will be 5 selections (in February, April, June, August and October) throughout the year and only the stories which have been submitted by the first of these months latest will be included in that month's elimination. The five stories which win the each selection will take part in the final voting in November and December.

3. Members can submit only one entry for each selection round. If their story is a winner, they will not be allowed to take part in other selections.

4. The Admin or Moderators are not responsible for editing or correcting of the stories and therefore the writers themselves are required to make sure that there are no grammatical or spelling errors. The submitted copy is final and further corrections by the writers will be disregarded.

5. Only those members with at least 100 posts by each voting period can submit stories for the competition and vote in the polls.

6. Those who enter the competition agree to keep the information on their identities and stories confidential till the end of that year (only the Admin and Moderators will have access to that information). Those who breech this rule will be disqualified automatically.

7. All entries should be your own original work and not have appeared anywhere else before. Authors retain the copyright rights for the stories submitted to the competition.

8. All submissions must be your sole creative work and written for this particular competition. Anyone found plagiarising will be disqualified from this and all future contests.

9. If one of the 5 entrants selected for the final vote are no longer a member of the site at the time of the final vote, they forfeit their entry and the second place entry for their leg of entries gets bumped to first place.

10. You can withdraw a story during the submission period; however, once the voting starts, no story can be withdrawn. [source]


Note: This poll will close on December 31st, 2009.

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PEN American Center’s Freedom to Write Program

Throughout the half century of The Literary Review’s existence as a journal devoted to writing from throughout the world, we have published the work of suppressed, imprisoned, and even assassinated authors. That is why we support the PEN American Center’s Freedom to Write Program and encourage our readers to support its efforts by participating in its campaigns.
The Program works to protect the freedom of the written word wherever it is imperiled. It defends writers and journalists from all over the world who are imprisoned, threatened, persecuted, or attacked in the course of carrying out their profession. In the U.S. it protests book-bannings in schools and counters legal challenges to the First Amendment.

In each of our quarterly issues we will feature the case of a writer selected by PEN and ask our readers to write letters in that writer’s behalf. Our website will also provide that information and announce alerts issued by the Freedom to Write Rapid Action Network.

With this issue, we request that you support the case of Ven Ngawang Phulchung, senior monk from Drepung monastery near Lhasa. He has also been singled out as the leader of the Drepung printing group, which secretly produced literature critical of the Chinese occupation of Tibet in early 1988. The publications of the group included a Tibetan translation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the first Tibetan political manifesto, "The Meaning of the Precious Democratic Constitution of Tibet," which called for a democratic system based on Buddhist tradition. The group also produced pro-independence leaflets that were designed to be stuck on walls in Lhasa. One describes how Tibetans were shot dead by police in pro-independence demonstrations and is considered unusual in that it presents a sober account of the event rather than exaggerating the details for propaganda purposes.

For more information, go to http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/772/prmID/174

Please continue to support the case of Cuban writer and independent journalist Normando Hernández González by writing to the Cuban authorities expressing alarm at reports of his deteriorating health; urging the Cuban authorities to provide as a matter of urgency all necessary medical attention to Normando Hernández González; and requesting the immediate release of all writers and journalists held in Cuban prisons in violation of their right to freedom of expression as recognized in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

To access Normando Hernández González’s page, go to http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/912/prmID/174

Download sample appeal

To access the Program’s web site, go to http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/172.
To access the Rapid Action Network, go to http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/180.

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