The Writers and Illustrators of the Future contests have announced the Fourth Quarter winners for the 26th year of the Writers competition and the 21st year of the Illustrators competition.
The prize-winning writers are:
First Place: Laurie Tom of California
Second Place: Scott W. Baker of Tennessee
Third Place: Lael Salaets of Oregon
They were chosen from a group of eight finalists, and each receive cash prizes and a week-long intensive writing workshop. Their stories will appear in the next volume of the L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future anthology.
The prize-winning illustrators are not ranked. They are listed alphabetically:
Alice Jingxuan Hu of Singapore (currently a resident of Illinois)
Ven Locklear of Oregon
Olivia Pelaez of New Jersey
The artists also receive cash prize and entrance into the illustrator workshop. Each of the quarterly illustrator winners will illustrate one of the stories published in the annual anthology.
The annual writing and illustrating grand prizes (of $5,000 each) will be awarded at a ceremony at the conclusion of the workshops, in August.
In addition to announcing the winners, the competition offers some “hot tips” from the judges:
In response to the question “What does it take to be professionally published in the United States where only 3 of every 10,000 manuscripts submitted see the light of print?” Larry Niven writes “Forget the great American novel. Write short stories instead, send them out to several editors and enter the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest four times a year. You can complete your stories quickly, submit them, move on to your next story, and have several stories being reviewed by editors at the same time.” He continues that the traditional novel process is too long for new authors. “You spend months on a novel, then send it to editors and wait for months more. Send out regularly to magazines that accept short stories.”
Judge K.D. Wentworth tackles the question of themes, quoting a two-year survey of thousands of entries for the contest: vampires are the most popular, with dungeons and dragons second, and werewolves third. Wizard stories were a close fourth. Wentworth said “It seems to suggest that some fantasy themes may be more enduring than others.” But when speaking to contest entrants, she notes, “Originality is the key element to a story being selected as a finalist…, so picking a popular theme doesn’t mean a story will be picked. You need a good imagination to be a successful writer, so I’ll lean towards the most creative entry every time.”
Quarterly deadlines for the contests are 31 December, 31 March, 30 June, and 30 September. Full entry details are available on this page.
Related articles previously published on SFScope:
Writers and Illustrators of the Future prizes awarded (3 September 2009)