Why You Should Enter EVENT’s LET DOWN YOUR HAIR Contest

October 31, 2017 at 10:37 am  •  Posted in Articles, Contest, Home Page, Welcome by

It’s a chance to experiment. Write a poem about a refrigerator that’s a portal to another dimension, a story about US politics being a figment of a cranky four-year-old’s imagination, or a personal essay about the time you were pretty sure your hamster could read your mind. With a word limit of 1800, in any genre, the LET DOWN YOUR HAIR contest is an opportunity to flex your writing muscles, to take a risk.

It could open the doors. All entries will be considered for publication in EVENT. Works published in our pages are regularly read by editors of anthologies like Best Canadian Stories, Best Canadian Poetry, and so on. Every year we nominate writers for the Journey Prize, the Pushcart Prizes, National Magazine and Western Magazine Awards, and more! Submitting your work is the first step to having your writing reach new readers. Madeleine Thien said, “EVENT found my work and brought it out into the world.”

Amber Dawn is our contest judge. She’s a maven of speculative writing in multiple genres including both poetry and prose, a winner of the Vancouver Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award. Her debut novel, Sub Rosa is described by Arsenal Pulp Press as “a beautiful and gutsy allegory of our times, a fairy-tale-like fantasia imbued with a grave, unapologetic realness.” Being selected to our contest shortlist means an expert will read your work.

We’ll throw in a one-year subscription to EVENT. Contest entrants will receive a one-year subscription to our magazine, including the Notes on Writing issue, featuring personal essays by notable Canadian writers exploring their writing lives. 

Grand Prize is $1000. That’s enough to buy over a hundred reams of paper and a new printer to print all your future stories on. Need we say more?

Learn more about the LET DOWN YOUR HAIR Speculative Writing Contest.

EVENT's 2017 Speculative Writing Contest