Adil Najam
After the great success of the first contest, the second ‘Life’s Too Short’ Short Story Contest has now been announced. The submission deadline is March 31, 2011. – so if you are an aspiring short story writer of Pakistani origin, do submit soon!
My pitch for why this is a good (maybe great) idea was already made last year and after the excellent anthology that came out of that first attempt (even though I have not yet gotten around to reviewing it here, it was really an excellent read) that pitch need be made no more.
Suffice to say, I agree with the flyer, above: “Following the success of the first Life’s Too Short Story Prize … it’s safe to say that Pakistani short story is alive and well.”
The rules are simple, and all contained in the poster above.
- Stories need to be submitted to lifestooshortentry@gmail.com by March 31, 2011.
- Participants must be of Pakistani origin.
- The stories may have any theme or subject, but should not exceed 5,000 words.
- The stories must be original and should not have been previously published anywhere in part or full.
- All entries must be in English.
- Only one entry per person.
- Entries will not be returned or acknowledged.
- Selected entrants will assign publication rights to Siren Publications.
- Only winners will be notified
The judges this year are Musharraf Ali Farooqi (The Adventures of Amir Hamza / Story of a Widow), Mohsin Hamid (The Reluctant Fundamentalist / Moth Smoke); and Sara Suleri Goodyear (Meatless Days / Boys Will Be Boys). The top three stories will get prizes of Rs. 100,000, Rs. 30,000 and Rs. 20,000 respectively.
The contest is, once again, being organized by Faiza S. Khan and Aysha Raja with support from the Zohra and ZZ Ahmed Foundation. To them goes our gratitude for implementing this wonderful idea. And to all the rest of you go our best wishes if you do indeed enter into the contest. If so, hurry up and submit your masterpiece!
Please visit the following link for extracts of the stories.
http://lifestooshortreview.wordpress.com/
@Jawad: Your comment reminds me of my Urdu teacher. She was new to our school. The first day she walked in, she started something like this…
“My name is …… and I am your new Urdu teacher. Today we are going to read about Faiz. Please turn your books to page 42.”
After a few seconds…”who can read Urdu in this class”.
Ofcourse I went to a so called Burger (O’Levels) school in Karachi and I am sure this was very common back in the days :)
Good to see this. I had thought of sending a story last time but did not get around to it eventually. Maybe this year I will. I hope so. Wish me luck.
Yes, I would also like to read the winning story (or even excerpt from it) from last year. But cannot find that on web. Can ATP help?