Accompanying next month’s Queenstown Writers Festival will be a novel 48-hour short story competition open to anyone based in Otago and Southland.
Entrants will be given three story ideas or ‘prompts’ at 5pm on Friday, November 10, via the festival’s website or social media.
They then have 48 hours within which to conjure up to 800 words of either fiction or non-fiction.
The open section will be judged by award-winning writer Steve Braunias, who’s looking for ‘‘stories where things actually happen, and one or two beautiful sentences’’.
The winner receives $500 cash and publication in the 1964 magazine.
A rangatahi section (Years 9-13) will be judged by award-winning screenwriter and author Michael Bennett, with the winner receiving $250 and a book voucher.
A tamariki section (Years 1-8) will be judged by local children’s author Jane Bloomfield, with first prize being $100 and a book voucher.
The prompts for this section are already on the festival web site, qtwritersfestival.nz.
The competition’s sponsored by Arrowtown’s Anna-Marie Chin Architects, which is also giving four $50 vouchers for highly-commendeds in the tamariki category.
