Gilded Ink Writing Contest

To all you fiction writers: want to enter a short-story contest judged by acclaimed author David Rakoff? Here's your chance!The College Group at the Met and Selected Shorts, a short story performance series at Symphony Space and on public radio around the country, co- present another student writing contest.  Students are asked to write 500 words or less about a “private paradise,” in celebration of the upcoming exhibition, The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City, opening on February 1, 2011.  Four winning entries, selected by the CGM committee, Symphony Space, and special guest judge David Rakoff (author of  Half Empty and  Don’t Get Too Comfortable and frequent contributor to NPR’s This American Life), will be read aloud at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Friday, February 4, 2011, recorded, and possibly aired later on Public Radio International.  The special event will be hosted by David Rakoff.Download the submission form here and start writing! GildedInk

Ten Minutes to Submit to West 10th Print Journal

It's Monday, what are you doing? Sitting in your jammies trolling the webs, procrastinating writing your term papers? Me too.But here's a more productive way to procrastinate: submit your prose or poetry to West 10th Journal! The deadline is today, Decemeber 6th, but with ten more minutes left in the day, it's not yet too late.Maybe you're computer is stuffed with short stories you've penned, but have been too nervous to show to anyone, or maybe you have the uncanny ability to write a haiku in seconds. Or maybe, you're so excellent at procrastinating that you've developed the ability to speed-write. Whatever the case, you've got nothing to lose.Plus there's a prize!Editors select one fiction and one poetry piece as "The Best" and the authors get $200, eternal bragging rights, something to put on their resumés, and to read they're stories at the West 10th launch party where Darin Strauss will probably shake your hand and then you'll feel pretty cool.So get your submission form here. And START WRITING!

Blog Contest Winner

Congratulations to Jessica Kagansky, the winner of our latest blog contest!In a Corner of a Chinese LaundromatJessica Kagansky the slant of the sparkles in the snow kept changingi looked up to find you sharply therestanding next to me with eyelids rosy from the cold.i wrapped my warm towel around your head like a garland of daisiesyour black curls were matted and I watched the red pigment leave your eyes and creepdown to crisscross your cheekbones and unfurl quietly across your lips where it belonged.you told me over the hum of the washing machines that my eyebrows were overgrownand i tried not to raise the corner of my upper lip in a sneer as you said itwe looked out the streaked window at a car stuck in the snow,blackened as a swordfish.

Contest Winner

Congratulations to Cynthia Blank, the winner of our most recent blog contest, "villanelle." We loved her poem "In a Summer Day;" give it a read and notice especially the way she both adheres to the villanelle style while also choosing moments to break out of the strict guidelines of the form.

In A Summer Day

Cynthia BlankThe things you know and refuse to say;(filling out the subconscious lists constructed in your head)I should tell you now, summer mayflies die todaywhen the sun has fled and the sky turns grayyou let me believe they’d remain forever in my bedalong with you and the things you knew but refused to saylike the stories of late spring kisses that went by waytoo fast; your hands began to slip out of mine and ledthe mayflies to sink their wings for all of yesterdayit wasn’t just those fading blue stars you chose to betrayI didn’t hate you when needles pricked me through a threadbut there were other things - you didn’t know enough to sayor to touch my wrist, the bare skin where now my fingers laypressed against my pulse; I know I’m alive not deadit was only the mayflies who were lost in a single summer dayonly not; the cold air also chased the two of us away(I should have loved some luminescent firefly instead)there were far too many things you knew you could not saysummer mayflies always die in a summer day