Owl Canyon Press’s Hackathon Writing Competition 2021
- Owl Canyon Press Logo
Owl Canyon Press, a publishing house based in Boulder Colorado in the USA, is running a writing competition with entries open from now until the 15th of March 2021. The competition is an annual event called the Hackathon, and anthologies of entries from past years are available on their website: https://www.owlcanyonpress.com
This is the 5th consecutive year in which they have run the event.
The competition asks for a piece of writing which is 20 paragraphs long, but with the caveat that the 1st and 12th paragraphs have already been written by the competition organisers.
The 1st paragraph must be;
The world felt changed. The fare on TV looked the same but wasn’t. Grocery shelves were well-stocked and colorful as ever, but with what exactly, it wasn’t as clear. Reports from Greenland foretold the future, as per usual, but, whereas before I ignored them, today I was unmoored. A friend, a former D-1 scholarship athlete, confided that he had stopped exercising, while my mother, who is sixty-three, enrolled in not one but three Pilates classes. The elevator opened and I stepped from pondering this liminal haze into face-to-face confrontation with the chairman of the board.
And the 12th paragraph must be;
The manager handed me a bill for $5,993.27, the cost of a new battery for my ancient Tesla. I looked it over, casually held my card over the scanner, and turned to leave. That’s when the woman coughed and I hesitated. Without turning and businesslike, I took a few more steps and asked if she thought she had a cold. When she didn’t immediately reply, I stopped and looked from the corner of my eyes. Spinning around, I was surprised to discover I was alone. Inspection of the premises, at first slow but soon frantic, revealed nothing and no one. And my car was gone too.
It is up to the writers to create the other 18 paragraphs and determine both the context of the story, and how it will end.
The 24 best stories will be published in this year’s anthology, and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place stores will receive $1000, $750 and $500 respectively.
For full details of the competition including how to enter and the nuances of the rules, go to the competition page on Owl Canyon Press’s website here.
Edited by Jasper Evans