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Finding the Profound in the Profoundly Ordinary: Announcing a Relief Journal/Faith in Fiction Short Story Contest
Posted by J. Mark Bertrand
on Wednesday, November 01, 2006
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It's November 1, All Saints' Day. Plenty of stuff is happening in the blogosphere, not the least of which is the beginning of National Novel Writing Month. But I'm thrilled to help announce the thing I'm most excited about: the Relief Journal/Faith in Fiction "Daily Sacrament" Short Story Contest. Dave Long made the official announcement earlier today. Here is the joint release:Relief/F*i*F "Daily Sacrament" Short Story ContestThat's the official version. Now, in the spirit of study Bibles everywhere, I'd like to offer my own uninspired commentary. I've always wanted to work with Dave Long, so when he suggested a joint contest between Relief Journal, where I'm the fiction editor, and his Faith in Fiction blog, I said yes. In the past, Dave has sponsored some great contests -- in fact, one of the stories in our debut issue (Michael Snyder's "All Healed Up") first surfaced during a Faith in Fiction contest. So the only question was, "What kind of contest should we run?"
Andre Dubus writes of cooking an omelet and it becomes a holy moment. Marilynne Robinson takes the act of baptism and communion out of their churchly garb and gives them new resonance and depth. Inspired by examples like these, the "Daily Sacrament" short fiction contest will challenge you to explore the everyday in light of the eternal -- or the sacred in the surroundings of the commonplace.
Reading Period: January 1 - March 15, 2007
Prize: Winner will receive $250 and publication in Relief Journal. Runners-up will be published on the Faith in Fiction blog.
Word Limit: 10,000
To find out more about the kind of fiction Relief Journal publishes, we encourage writers to visit our site at www.reliefjournal.com and order a copy of the publication. Relief will accept submissions online at a new contest site that will be unveiled when the reading period begins.
The key to a contest like this is the choose a theme that is evocative without imposing too much of a limitation. Writers benefit from a certain amount of direction, but they also need room to breathe. We toyed around with a variety of themes, but eventually settled on the idea of "daily sacrament." Dave admired the way Andre Dubus can imbue ordinary routines with religious significance. I couldn't help thinking of the way Marilynne Robinson in Gilead turns an earthy, singed meal into communion. So often, we look for spiritual things in the sturm and drang of apocalyptic melodrama, but sometimes all it takes to see the deeper reality of life is to look at everyday things with new eyes. So this contest is about finding the profound in the profoundly ordinary.
The Daily Sacrament Short Story Contest has several things going for it. First, there's the cash prize. We don't charge an entry fee, but we do award the winning story with $250 and publication in Relief. As with past Faith in Fiction contests, runners up will be featured on Dave's site. In the past, this kind of attention has led to inquiries from editors and agents, so being featured on Faith in Fiction is definitely a prize in and of itself. In addition, this contest has a very generous word limit: 10,000 words, which is the upper limit for publication in Relief. That means writers have space for developments and complications -- again, room to breathe. Dave and I want to read your best work, and we're giving you space to do it. If you need a thousand words, fine. If you need twice as many or ten times as many, that's fine, too.
Our reading period will last from January 1 to March 15, 2007. All submissions will be accepted online, at a dedicated site Relief will launch when the period begins. We're announcing the contest now to coincide with the appearance of the first issue of Relief. Obviously, we hope the writers interested in the contest will subscribe to the journal (or at least by a single issue) to see what kind of writing we're excited about. The two months between this announcment and the beginning of the reading period give you time to think, to brainstorm, to write a flurry of drafts and throw them in the trash -- whatever it takes to inspire you. In the meantime, we'll be promoting the contest, letting writers everywhere know about this new opportunity.
If you'd like to help us spread the word, we'd appreciate it. You can mention the contest on your blog, tell your critique group partners, post it on e-mail loops -- anything that comes to mind.
