Selected Shorts Program & Writing Contest

I love learning something new every day, so I was thrilled to read Terrie Farley Moran’s recent post, “Talk Radio,” about “Selected Shorts,” a program at Symphony Space in which short fiction is read by actors in front of a live audience, which is recorded and broadcast on radio. You can download the current program after they post them on Monday evenings - follow the instructions here.

I’m active on Twitter (follow me @katcop13) and I read an RT (re-tweet) by Symphony Space from Selected Shorts: “This week’s radio show: Mary Stuart Masterson, Campbell Scott and Marian Seldes - Tales That Surprise,” along with a link to the PRI (Public Radio International) Station and Program Locator.

I’m glad that Symphony Space re-tweeted the message from Selected Shorts. I immediately began following @SelectedShorts, and guess what? I learned something new. Symphony Space is sponsoring a short story writing contest: The 2010 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize, with guest judge Nathan Englander. “The winning submission will be read as a part of the Selected Shorts performance at Symphony Space on April 7, 2010. The story will be recorded for possible later broadcast as part of the public radio series. The winner will received $1000.” The winner will also receive two tickets to attend the performance in which their piece will be read!

The theme is “Apartments and Neighbors.” Submissions must be titled and no longer than 750 words. Entries must be received by January 29, 2010. There is a $25.00 fee to enter the contest, either online or by snail mail.

I know many of you are busy with NaNoWriMo this month, but maybe it’s something to consider in December.

The contest page describes the impressive background of the guest judge: Nathan Englander is the author of the PEN/Malamud Award and American Academy of Arts and Letters' Sue Kaufman Prize-winning short story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and the novel The Ministry of Special Cases, winner of The Harold U. Ribalow Prize. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic Monthly, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Englander has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and was selected as one of "20 Writers for the 21st Century" by The New Yorker.

Thanks to Terrie, Twitter, Symphony Space and their Selected Shorts series, for contributing to my daily dose of new knowledge!

Don't forget: there's still time to enter the Semantics of Murder giveaway - leave a comment on Laura K. Curtis's post. You have until midnight Sunday night.