A short fiction contest for adults who reside in Bucks County is taking place at Bucks. The deadline to submit entries is Oct. 14.
Three winners will be chosen and notified within two weeks of the deadline and will be celebrated through an online ceremony on Nov. 17.There will be a separate event for high school students in Spring of 2022.
Each contestant may submit one original short story. Each submission must be previously unpublished and typed in Times New Roman 12-point font, double-spaced with one-inch margins, and no more than 18 pages. All entries must be submitted electronically at: https://www.bucks.edu/academics/department/lang-lit/shortfictioncontest
Any resident of Bucks County over the age of 18 is eligible to participate in the contest. Employees of Bucks are ineligible to participate, but students are strongly encouraged to enter.
“I’ve always liked writing competitively, I can remember entering writing contests as early as third grade. All the kids in my class wrote stories about a talking bunny and the winner got their story published in the school newsletter,” laughed 18-year-old Moira Rice, a business major from Southampton. “I’m a fully virtual student and this contest is held online which is nice for people like me who don’t go on campus.”
“I actually first heard about the contest when I saw an ad for the Bucks poetry contest on Facebook. When I looked into it more, I found out about the short fiction contest,” 18-year-old Bucks early education major Julia Lottier of Churchville shared, “Poetry was never my thing, but I love writing short stories.”
Three winners will be chosen by the judge and each will be given a cash prize. The first-place winner will receive $200, second-place receives $100, and third-place receives $50. Each winner will also get a public reading via Bucks and announcements in the local newspapers.
The contest is supported and funded by the Bucks Department of Language and Literature. Bucks Professor Elizabeth Luciano created and coordinates the contest.
Author Megan Angelo will be the final judge of the contest. Angelo, a Quakertown native and graduate from Villanova University, has had her writings published in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Glamour, and Elle. Angelo has written about television, film, and pop culture, but recently published a dystopian fiction novel titled “Followers” in 2020.