Jane Austen Short Story competitions
You may be interested to learn of the Jane Austen Short Story Award competition sponsored by the Chawton House Library. From the website:
Our intention is to publish the very best short fiction. The Chair of judges is Michèle Roberts, award-winning author and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.
We are looking for short stories of 2,000-2,500 words in length. This year the theme is ‘the heroes and villains in Jane Austen’s novels’. You can draw inspiration from any character or characters, male or female, whom you perceive to be heroic or villainous. Stories can have a historical or a contemporary setting – anything goes as long as it is well written and you state on the entry form how your idea originated.
First prize: £1,000. Two runners up: £200 each. All three finalists will also win a week’s writers’ retreat at Chawton House. Seventeen other shortlisted authors will receive £40 plus publication in the winners’ anthology (the collection of last year’s winners, Dancing with Mr Darcy, has been sold in bookshops across the UK and has recently been published in the USA by Harper Collins).
Entrants can be based anywhere in the world- stories must be submitted in English.
The deadline is March 31, 2011.
Time is also quickly running out on the Jane Austen Made Me Do It Short Story Contest. From the website:
Welcome, aspiring Austenesque fiction writers. Would you like to see your name listed among an august group of best-selling and highly acclaimed authors in the new Jane Austen-inspired short story anthology Jane Austen Made Me Do It, to be published by Ballantine Books in Fall 2011?
If so, make haste, put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and enter your story in the Jane Austen Made Me Do It Short Story Contest. Ten finalists from the entries will be chosen by popular vote right here at The Republic of Pemberley, and one lucky Grand Prize winner will be selected from the Top Ten finalists by the Ballantine Books editorial staff and Laurel Ann Nattress, the editor of the anthology.
Jane Austen Made Me Do It contains more than twenty best-selling and popular authors who have contributed short stories inspired by Jane Austen, her novels and her philosophies of life and love. From historical continuations of her plots and characters to contemporary spinoffs and comedies, the stories encapsulate what we love about our favorite author: romance, social satire and witty humor. Contributing to the line-up are best-selling authors Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club), Adriana Trigiani (Brava, Valentine), Lauren Willig (The Pink Carnation series), Laurie Viera Rigler (The Jane Austen Addict series), Syrie James (The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen), Stephanie Barron (Being A Jane Austen Mystery series), and the husband and wife writing team of Frank Delaney (Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show) and Diane Meier (The Season of Second Chances). Many Austenesque authors and others from related genres have already contributed to the project. One spot in the anthology remains open for the lucky Grand Prize winner.
The deadline is Feb. 13, 2011.