It’s beginning to look a lot like…holiday story time! We are pleased to announce the Holiday Lit Blitz, a specialty contest for short Mormon literature focused on the holidays. Deck our inbox with works under 1,000 words in any genre which both resonate with a Latter-day Saint audience and incorporate a holiday.
Under our tree we expect to find:
essays capturing the night before the ward Christmas party,
short stories about the Easter program gone wrong,
poems exploring your complex feelings surrounding Mother’s Day,
reminiscences of your Thanksgiving family recipes,
flash fiction commemorating your ward Talk Like A Pirate Day,
sonnets on Pioneer Day celebrations,
interactive text featuring Pi(e) Day,
maybe even lyrics about Labor Day,
and much more!
While we expect many of the pieces to focus on Christmas and New Year’s, we are open to all holidays, big and small–Valentine’s, Day of the Dead, Diwali, St. Patrick’s Day, Bastille Day or other national holidays . . . All we want for Christmas is Mormon lit, so please check off our list!
Submissions may be written in any language. Previously published material and simultaneous submissions are acceptable. Up to three submissions are allowed per author. Submissions are due by the end of day on 4 November 2024. If you’re interested in submitting, please see the full submission details below.
Finalists will initially be published on the Twelve Days of Mormon Lit in early December, both in electronic form on the Mormon Lit Lab website (https://www.mormonlitlab.org/) and (likely) in audio form on an accompanying Mormon Lit Lab podcast. At the conclusion of the contest, readers will vote for their favorite pieces, and two prizes will be given: a $125 prize to the audience choice winner and a $125 prize for a judge’s choice award. Thanks to the generosity of our donors, each selected finalist will also receive a $25 token payment (paid via Paypal). All finalists’ stories will be published in a future volume of our print anthology, and finalist authors become eligible for future sessions of our book mentoring program.
As a writer, you retain the right to republish your piece in your own collections or other venues. By submitting, authors give us non-exclusive rights to publish their work electronically, as part of an audio podcast, and in a future print anthology (with an anthology copy as payment for including your piece or pieces). As stated above, previously published work is fine if you still have the rights to the piece and if it meets the above contest requirements.
Submission Details:
Submissions should be at most 1,000 words.
If submitting multiple pieces, each piece must be in its own document.
To facilitate judging, submissions should be attached to the email and should be in a .doc, .docx, or .pdf file. Submissions in other formats will not be considered.
In your email, please include both your name and the name of your piece.
Submissions are judged blindly. Your name should not be included in the submission file or in the document’s file name. Your name should only be in the email.
Email submissions to everydaymormonwriter@gmail.com by the end of 4 November 2024.
If you have any questions on the contest, please email us at everydaymormonwriter@gmail.com.
This contest will be guest edited by Liz Busby and Katherine Cowley.
Liz Busby is a writer of creative nonfiction and science fiction/fantasy. She co-hosts the podcast Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree, which examines movies and tv from a Latter-day Saint perspective. She lives in Utah with her husband and their four children and recently returned to BYU for her graduate degree in English. Find her writing on www.lizbusby.com.
Katherine Cowley is the author of three novels, including The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, which was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and was the winner of the LDSPMA Praiseworthy Award for Best Suspense/Mystery novel. Her short LDS fiction appears in the Mormon Lit Blitz, Segullah, and Irreantum. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with her husband and three daughters. Find more about her at www.katherinecowley.com.
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