The LAURA Award Short Story Contest, 2011 (Women Writing the West)
Purpose
1. To provide an additional benefit for all WWW members.
2. To celebrate the short story.
There is no relationship between the WILLA competition and the short story competition.
Contest Rules -- General
1. Only WWW members are eligible to enter. (Information on membership can be found here.)
2. Each member may enter one short story, i.e., short fiction. The short story must be the author’s original work, not contracted or being considered for publication prior to the entry deadline, and must not have been published in any form, print or electronic. Short stories that have won or placed in previous LAURA contests are ineligible.
3. The short fiction story must feature a female protagonist, and be set in the American West. For the purposes of this competition, that is defined as anywhere west of the Mississippi River. The story may be set in the past, present, or future. Stories targeting both juvenile and adult markets will be accepted. There will not be separate categories.
Entry Format Rules
1. The short fiction story must be no more than 5,000 words.
2. Entries will be accepted in electronic (e-mail attachment) form only. Title must be listed in the subject line of the e-mail after the word “LAURA.” An example of the email’s subject line is: “LAURA – Moonlit Trail.”
3. The body of the e-mail message should include the following information: the author’s name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address; the story title; the word count.
4. ***IMPORTANT: The author’s name appearing anywhere on the story (e-mail attachment) will disqualify the submission. The file name of the attachment should consist of the story’s title and may be followed by other words that do not reveal the author’s identity.
5. This e-mail attachment (the story) must be double-spaced, in standard 12-point type (Times, Times New Roman, Courier New), one-inch margins all around, ragged right margins.
6. Each page of the story must include the story’s title in the header. All pages must be numbered with both an individual page number and the total number of pages (examples: page 1 of 10, page 2 of 10; or page 1/10, page 2/10.) Page numbering is preferred in the header, with the title (Moonlit Trail -- page 1 of 10), but numbering at the bottom of the page is allowed. As stated above, the author’s name or identity must not appear anywhere on the story.
7. Failure to adhere to these rules is grounds for disqualification of the entry. No entry fee will be returned.
Entry Deadline & Fees
1. Entry fee is $15, payable via PayPal on the WWW web site.
2. Entries should be e-mailed to Pam Tartaglio, pamtartaglio@gmail.com, no later than May 15, 2011.
3. Entrant will receive e-mail confirmation of the arrival of entry. If confirmation is not received within one week of sending entry, please e-mail coordinator.
4. Entrants must keep a copy of their story.
5. No critiques will be provided.
Judging
1. The contest coordinator, who is the current President Elect, will choose three preliminary screeners, who may be WWW members. The three screeners may not themselves enter a story in the contest in the year in which they serve as a screener. The three screeners will remain anonymous to everyone except the LAURA Committee (consisting of the current President, Past President, and President Elect).
2. A short story rubric will be provided to these screeners to help them evaluate the submissions. The screeners will score each entry according to the rubric, and submit these scores to the contest coordinator. Based upon these scores, the contest coordinator will identify the top five stories, which will be submitted to a Final Judge. The Final Judge shall not be a member of WWW. She/he may be a librarian, creative writing instructor, or non-member author who has published short stories to her/his credit.
3. The Final Judge will choose the First, Second, and Third place stories.
Awards
The winners will be announced at the 2011 WWW conference. The authors of the top three stories will be notified prior to the conference, but will not be told their placement. The winning stories will be published in the WWW Online LAURA journal. The winning authors will receive a certificate and, at the discretion of the LAURA Committee, a cash award.
More information here.
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