“Storyteller’s Award” Writing Contest

I stumbled into the Surrey (BC) International Writers Conference while on a booktour back in…goodness, 1994—and was so charmed by the organization and personality of the conference that I’ve gone back every year since. (And I’ll be back this year, too—October 24-26—doing (among other things) a workshop with the ever-hilarious Chris Humphreys about how to write sex scenes.)

Well, another of the Old Regulars at this conference is the delightful Jack Whyte, author of the excellent Arthurian “Brood of Eagles” saga, and more recently, several novels about the Knights Templar. Jack’s a long-time friend, and at one of these conferences, we got talking about what we like to read, as well as what we like to write, and concluded that Story is Everything.

The upshot of this discussion is that Jack and I ended up funding the “Storyteller’s Award”—a cash prize awarded for the best short story submitted to a contest sponsored by the SiWC each year. Jack and I are the judges of this contest, and first prize is $1000. (We also have in progress a project in collaboration with Chapters bookstores to compile and publish a book containing the winning entries.)

There are also contests for non-fiction and poetry—and no, you needn’t attend the conference to enter, though of course I think the conference is well worth it. [g] (Further details about the conference can be found at HYPERLINK “http://www.siwc.ca/” http://www.siwc.ca/ .)

For those of you who work in short forms…give the contest a look, here!

HYPERLINK “http://www.siwc.ca/contest/index.php” http://www.siwc.ca/contest/index.php