From a field of thousands, whittled down to 8 finalists, the winners of the 3rd Quarter of the 30th year of the
L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest have been selected and announced:

1st Place: Leena Likitalo of Helsinki, Finland     
2nd Place: Shauna O’Meara of Canberra, Australia 
3rd Place: Paul Eckheart of Bountiful, Utah

Leena is quality control for a computer games company, Shauna is a writer and artist, and Paul is a software engineer. They will each be flown to Los Angeles for a week-long workshop given by award-winning authors Tim Powers and Dave Wolverton, culminating in a black-tie gala awards ceremony with over 1,200 guests in attendance.

Leena has been learning English since she was 16 years old when her father told her that if she wanted to be successful in life, she would need to learn the English language. Years later she bought a Writers of the Future anthology in an airport but her real determination to become an author was the inspiration given to her from Writers of the Future Contest winner and now New York Times bestselling author Patrick Rothfuss. She noticed the acknowledgement to the Writers of the Future contest in Rothfuss’ novel Name of the Wind and this inspired Leena to enter the Contest. She has been entering now for 2 1/2 years with one Honorable Mention notification for the several stories submitted thus far.  

As Leena is a 1st place winner, she will now compete with the other 1st place winners (four in all) for the grand prize of $5,000.