Transparency About 3rd Place

Since some people want to know more about what happened with third place and why we chose not to award it to anyone, we will tell you what we can without slandering anyone.

After choosing the winners and having them all sign agreements that their work was original and previously unpublished, we discovered that 3^rd place had already won a contest and published elsewhere more than a year ago. This is a violation of our guidelines and because it was not disclosed to us, but rather discovered by us, we were especially unhappy. Occasionally, because we allow simultaneous submissions, people get good news calls simultaneously, and if they disclose it to us, we are usually cool about a story being published in a non-competing avenue simultaneously. This has happened 2 or 3 times in 8 years. However, in this case we were either lied to or there was a grave misunderstanding on the writer’s part about what “published” means. So we had to disqualify the entry.

I thought this was good news, since the woman who came in 4^th place was my personal favorite, but she declined the honor of 3^rd place, because she had already submitted elsewhere and was hoping to get a better offer. There was a tie for 5^th place, however, both stories had significant problems, and we decided that they weren’t publishable as they are. Because this is a writing contest, we can’t edit the stories to make them winners, no matter how much we want to. We realize that there may have been other stories that were winner material that may have fallen through the judges’ notice for whatever reason. Judging is a highly individual process and some people have wildly different likes and dislikes. In the end, we had to stick with the top stories that were chosen.

So that brings us up to date. We are committed to helping writers tell their stories and supporting them in that journey. We realize how not awarding 3^rd place looks—that we are depriving some other author of a prize, but this actually gives us the opportunity to do more with the prize money that is sort of hanging out in space waiting to be used. We aren't sure what to do with it, but we'd like to use it to forward our mission of helping writers and promoting storytelling. We have several ideas and would like readers to vote in the comments.

• Give away more money in the next contest.
  
• Give each of the remaining 6 of the top 10 finalists free feedback/formal critique (normally $40).
• Give it the most disgruntled entrants to make them happy
• Give it to Write Girls, a charity that helps teen girls through writing mentorship. OR Ask readers to submit nominations for a teen girl or boy who could use it.
• Start a scholarship fund for writers with merit who can't afford classes.
  

Other ideas? Vote or leave your comments in the blog.