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Taking the contest plunge
Published: July 14, 2004 Angela K. Forbes, whose short story "Beyond Golgotha and the Kwiki Mart" won the first New Discovery Short Fiction Award, had never submitted anything for publication when she saw the contest rules and decided to enter. "I had a half-dozen short stories floating around in various stages of completion," she says. "They never seemed finished enough. There was always that character that needed further developing, or a scene that just wasn't quite working. And, to be honest, not submitting allowed me to avoid rejection!"
Fortunately, Angela overcame her fears and submitted her story, with happy results. Her experience is a testament to the benefit of taking the plunge and sending your work out.
When we joined Rosebud magazine in sponsoring the New Discovery contest, our hope was to give unrecognized writers a chance to be published. We couldn't be more pleased with the outcome.
We received almost 700 manuscripts, which kept our staff and colleagues at Rosebud very busy. Many thanks to the first-round judges, Rosebud founder and editor-at-large John Lehman and short-story writer Robert Wake, who were energized by the overall excellent quality of the work, even though it made their job harder. They submitted the top 20 manuscripts to our finalist judge, Jean Thompson, a novelist and short-story writer who was a National Book Award finalist. We thank her for her dedication to the craft and for her outstanding selections.
Congratulations to Angela, second-place winner Sage K. Marsters for "Turkey Dreams," and third-place winner Mary Kappelt Skol for "Hugging the Curb." (You'll find Thompson's essay about what makes a winning short story on page 24.) All three stories will be in Rosebud's August issue.
After such a great response to our first contest, we decided to team up with Rosebud again--this time for a poetry competition. To learn how to enter, go to www.writermag.com. Complete details will also be published in our September issue. So polish your poems--you may be the next winner.
--Posted July 14, 2004 |
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