The winners have been announced!
Drumroll here....
The winners of the 2012 Half-Yearly Contest are:
First Place: Last Kiss, by Karen Ross Samford
Second Place: Metamorphosis, by Cara Achterberg
Third Place: Talking with Chloe, by Annie Murray
We sincerely thank all who submitted their stories and invite you to submit again in August. Guidelines for the Annual contest are here.
Showing posts with label winners. Show all posts
Showing posts with label winners. Show all posts
May 31, 2012
October 20, 2011
The Winners are...
Memoirs Ink is happy to announce the winners of the 2011 Annual Writing Contest:
First Place: The Narrative Voice, by Emily Gambone
Second Place: A Great Love, by Sue Granzella
Third Place: The Circus Inside Me, by Re McBride
Honorable Mention: To the Edge, by Patricia Schultheis
Please read and enjoy them and pass on or comment on any stories you enjoy. If you would like to enter our next contest, you can view the guidelines here.
May 2, 2011
Annoucning the Winners - 2011 Half Yearly Contest
Okay there was a little bit of scandal, but we are over it. Here are the winners.
We will be adding like buttons to our winner archives soon, so make sure you "like" them if you like them. Thumbs up. Smiley Face. Yay! Lots of exclamation points.
First Place: Hockey Night in Canada by Ariadne Hawkins
Second Place: Tasty by Lauren Leatherman
Third Place: In an unprecedented incident, we have disqualified the 3rd place winner for violation of the guidelines. The judges and staff at Memoirs Ink, annoyed and disheartened, have decided not to award it to anyone else.We will be adding like buttons to our winner archives soon, so make sure you "like" them if you like them. Thumbs up. Smiley Face. Yay! Lots of exclamation points.
May 17, 2010
The winners are....
We are thrilled to announce the winners of the 2010 Memoirs Ink Half-Yearly Writing Contest. Here they are:
You can read these and previous years winners and bios in our archives: here.
Please keep up the good writing and enter our next contest--the deadline for that contest, is August 14, and August 31, 2010. You can read the full guidelines and enter here.
First Place:
Hellhound
Melissa Febos
Second Place:
Dreamer
Nora Claypool
Third Place:
Do You Make Gravy?
Jennifer Blomgren
Honorable Mention:
Summer Waters
Julian Bentley- Edelman
Hellhound
Melissa Febos
Second Place:
Dreamer
Nora Claypool
Third Place:
Do You Make Gravy?
Jennifer Blomgren
Honorable Mention:
Summer Waters
Julian Bentley- Edelman
You can read these and previous years winners and bios in our archives: here.
Please keep up the good writing and enter our next contest--the deadline for that contest, is August 14, and August 31, 2010. You can read the full guidelines and enter here.
October 29, 2009
Contest Joys and Woes
We just published the winners of our Annual Contest yesterday and I read some of them for the first time. But you will notice we did not publish second place. This is because I got tired of waiting for Kendall Pope to get back to me. He seemed really excited to win second place, but hasn't sent me his contest winner agreement form yet or returned my emails or calls. I hope he's okay. It's totally bizarre. His story was good. I read it and there was one part in it involving cruelty to a turtle that made me cringe and want to look away, but I couldn't. You know. Like roller derby, or speedracing. You may say you don't really want to see girls get clobbered or some hayseed fried alive, but secretly you do. Hopefully Kendall will turn up. If not, I'll have to split his money among the other winners. I'm sure they won't complain.
I have gotten out of judging myself because it is darn too hard. And then there's the problem of what to do with all these stories after it's all over. I feel sort of awful just recycling them because I know these are people's lives. Some of them opened a vein to write these stories.
Also, I know that even though our judges are professionals, personal tastes vary widely. One year I asked for the top ten from 4 different people and none of us had the same ten. Ultimately, when it comes down to selecting the winners from the top 25 or so, it's personal taste. That's why we try to change up the judging every year.
If you are wondering what process your pieces are put through when you submit them to a writing contest I'll tell you how it works here. We do a first read of all the stories. Who makes is past the first read? If your first page is well written and makes us want to turn the page, it makes it into the reread pile. Usually about 50-75 stories make it to the reread pile. So if you know that you tend to have false starts in your writing, this might be what's keeping you back. We'd love to read every word of each story, but we can't. The second read is much more selective. We're looking for good writing and a good story. I can't tell you how many times I find one and not the other--a great story poorly executed or an impressive writer with no story that I can find. After this read we usually have about 12-15 and then is the hardest part. I usually go for what moves me the most, whether it is to laugh out loud or cry or think about it for days after. But again, this is really subjective.
I usually let the finalists know that they were finalists, because I'm nice, and because I know it can be frustrating to submit to contests with no response at all. But everyone who submitted to our contest should know that just by submitting, you have become more of a writer. This genre is, in my opinion, has the bravest souls and has the greatest capacity for healing ourselves and inspiring and influencing others. So keep writing.
I have gotten out of judging myself because it is darn too hard. And then there's the problem of what to do with all these stories after it's all over. I feel sort of awful just recycling them because I know these are people's lives. Some of them opened a vein to write these stories.
Also, I know that even though our judges are professionals, personal tastes vary widely. One year I asked for the top ten from 4 different people and none of us had the same ten. Ultimately, when it comes down to selecting the winners from the top 25 or so, it's personal taste. That's why we try to change up the judging every year.
If you are wondering what process your pieces are put through when you submit them to a writing contest I'll tell you how it works here. We do a first read of all the stories. Who makes is past the first read? If your first page is well written and makes us want to turn the page, it makes it into the reread pile. Usually about 50-75 stories make it to the reread pile. So if you know that you tend to have false starts in your writing, this might be what's keeping you back. We'd love to read every word of each story, but we can't. The second read is much more selective. We're looking for good writing and a good story. I can't tell you how many times I find one and not the other--a great story poorly executed or an impressive writer with no story that I can find. After this read we usually have about 12-15 and then is the hardest part. I usually go for what moves me the most, whether it is to laugh out loud or cry or think about it for days after. But again, this is really subjective.
I usually let the finalists know that they were finalists, because I'm nice, and because I know it can be frustrating to submit to contests with no response at all. But everyone who submitted to our contest should know that just by submitting, you have become more of a writer. This genre is, in my opinion, has the bravest souls and has the greatest capacity for healing ourselves and inspiring and influencing others. So keep writing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
