Keycon 2009 Short Story Contest

Keycon Short Sory Contest Advertisement with the prizes and rules summary

Short Story Contest Coordinator Contact Information:

If, after a period of 48 hours, you have difficulties contacting the contest coordinator, please contact the con-chairs for assistance.

Contest Rules

This contest is open to all writers.

  • Deadline: January 15, 2009.
  • Word Limit: 8000 words.
  • Entry Fee: $5

Contest winners will be announced at the Keycon Spring Social in March 2009, and afterwards on the Keycon website.

In addition to publication in the Keycon chapbook, winners will receive:

  • First Prize: $100
  • Second Prize: $50
  • Third Prize: $25

Each piece should be accompanied by the following information:

  • Title
  • Your full legal name
  • Your date of birth
  • Your street address
  • Your phone number
  • Your email address

This information does not count toward your word count.

The contest judges may, at their sole discretion, refuse to consider any entry. Submissions that do not follow the contest rules and submission guidelines (garbled format, inappropriate content, calling the contest coordinator in the morning, etc.) will not be considered.

You have complete freedom in your choice of subject matter, but please ensure all submissions are tasteful and available to be read by all ages. If you are in doubt as to the definition of "tasteful" please query the contest coordinator.

Submissions containing pornographic and/or explicit material, sexual assault, graphic depictions of violence or abuse of children and/or animals will be rejected outright. Submissions containing violently upsetting material and/or hate speech will result in all future messages from your IP address being automatically directed to the trash unread.

Submissions must be original and unpublished. Entries must be the original work of the entrant.

Submissions containing excessive grammar/spelling errors will be returned and will not be reconsidered until after they have been run through either proper editing software, or a good human editor.

The author retains all rights to their own work with the following exceptions: The author agrees that, should their entry be accepted as a winner in this contest, Keycon 2009 will retain exclusive first rights to publish the winning manuscript in a chapbook that will be used to promote the convention. The author understands that they will NOT be receiving any royalties from the sale of these chapbooks. The winning authors also agree that Keycon has the right to re-print and re-sell these chapbooks again in the future, only if written permission has been received from the author.

All entrants with valid postal information will receive a copy of the chapbook when it is printed.

The Keycon 26 convention committee, WINSFA senators and their immediate families are not eligible to enter.

Submitting to the contest constitutes acceptance of these rules and conditions.

Submission Guidelines

We will be accepting submissions via email. We will not be accepting submissions via snail mail (regular post). However, if you are unable to access the Internet and still wish to participate in the contest, please contact the contest coordinator by phone ONLY AFTER NOON to make alternate arrangements.

Please follow standard manuscript format for short stories. Here is a short article from the SFWA website explaining what we mean.

Please ensure you do not include any additional formatting (backgrounds, pictures, etc.)

You may either submit work in text-only format in the body of your email or you may include it as an attachment (.txt and .rtf are preferred - if you have questions/difficulties with format, please contact the contest coordinator).

You may enter the contest any number of times, but you will need to pay the entry fee for each story you submit.

Please only submit one story per email.

Please include only the information we have requested and your story. Your story will be judged upon its own merit and according to the personal taste of the judges. If you are selected as one of the contest winners, we will contact you requesting a short bio.

When you submit a story via email, you should receive an email response within 48 hours indicating that your submission has been received. The only exception to this is that the short story contest coordinator will not be responding to emails while she is on vacation between August 12-19, 2008.

Please indicate in your email if you will be attending Keycon 26 and whether or not you will be available to participate in a discussion panel. (Attendance at Keycon and/or participation in the discussion panel will have no bearing on the judge's decision. This info is for Keycon programming planning purposes only.)

You may enter as many times as you like, however the $5 entry fee will need to be paid for each story individually. Unless otherwise arranged, one copy of the finished chapbook will be mailed to the postal address provided to us with your entry.

We prefer payment of the entry fee to be made via paypal to: turtle

Paypal will give you an email receipt for the contest entry fee and will immediately notify the contest coordinator that money has been received.

Please ensure that you include your name and the title of your story in the paypal comments to avoid any confusion.

Please contact the contest coordinator if paypal is not available to you and we will work with you to make alternate arrangements.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the contest coordinator.

We look forward to reading your work. Good luck!