Bookshop Santa Cruz Announces Fiction Contest

Do you have a story you’ve written stashed on your hard drive, gathering dust in a drawer or tucked away in the right side of your brain, just waiting to be told?

Well, it’s time to get it out, polish it up and send it in to Eighth-Annual Short Story Contest.

Your original fiction should be no longer than 1,200 words but can be on any subject and written in any style you choose.

Three prizes will be awarded.

The first-place prize is the SuRaa Fiction Award, which includes $250 cash, a $100 gift certificate and publication on Bookshop Santa Cruz’s website and in the summer 2011 edition of its newsletter, Readers, which has a circulation of 12,000.

The first-place award was created by the family of Sundara Ramaswamy, a Tamil writer who lived off and on in Santa Cruz for 15 years. Tamil is an ethnic group native to South India and Sri Lanka, and Ramaswamy’s Tamil literature, which includes novels, short stories, essays and poetry, has been translated into English, German, French, Hebrew and other Indian languages. Ramaswamy won many literary awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the University of Toronto and the President’s award in India.

The second-place winner will receive a $100 gift certificate, and third place will win a $50 gift certificate. Both second- and third-place stories will be posted in Bookshop Santa Cruz.

All three winners will also have their moment in the limelight on Bruce Bratton’s Universal Grapevine radio program (Tuesdays 7-8 p.m., KZSC 88.1 FM), where they will read their winning stories.

To ensure impartial judging, authors’ names will not be on the stories. An entry fee of $6 per story is required, and the deadline for submissions is March 15. Winners will be announced March 30.

For complete information on the contest, visit Bookshop Santa Cruz’s website.