Equivocality

The Fifth Annual Equivocality Writer’s Travel Scholarship

Eva Konstantopoulos has won the 2009 Writer’s Travel Scholarship!

She wrote a fabulous little story called James Dean Was Here and will be heading Argentina in March 2010 to continue her research.

Naturally, we’re all very proud. As I told Eva, It’s a lovely, quirky little story, concise and clearly written, and enjoyable to read. And it stayed with me after I read it.

I never read the bios before I read the stories, which is why I was surprised to learn that Eva is working on an MFA. Sadly, judging by the submissions I receive every year, clarity is somewhat unusual for serious students of art and letters. There is a tendency to be very “literary”, which usually means using big words and heavy metaphors in every goddamn sentence. Also, Eva’s story is concise and well-paced; in far too many submissions I have the urge to strike entire paragraphs as unnecessary.

Btu she avoided all of this and put together a wonderful little tale. I can’t wait to read more from her.

Congratulations again, and see you all again next year!

2009 Contest Announcement

Welcome back to the Writer’s Travel Scholarship, now in its fifth fabulous year! This is is a short-form writing contest where the winner gets a round-trip ticket to anywhere in the world. Really.

Naturally, I do see a lot of travel writing submissions, but I’d like to reiterate that this is not about travel writing: it’s about writers traveling. Anything is fair game, as long as it’s prose under 10,000 words. Fiction, non-fiction, memoir, porn, whatever… just make it a good read.

“Why do you do this?” is a frequently-asked-question. So I will repeat (say it with me this time):

I think travel is good. I think writing is good. I think it is important that writers travel.

Applications are open from now until midnight April 30th, 2009. The winner will be announced May 15th.

Changes from last year

I am now requiring a $5 application fee for each entry. The contest is getting big, and this will help cover the costs of promotion, my time reading through all your submissions, and (part of) the cost of the ticket prize.
Sorry, no more poetry. The contest is prose-only once again. Poetry just seemed too different to compare fairly to prose.

How To Enter

Applicants must submit a short prose piece, 10,000 words maximum. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever, on any topic.
Also tell me a little about yourself, where you would go with your free ticket, for how long, and why. You can’t ever have been to that country before — I impose this restriction to encourage people to go somewhere new, rather than using the ticket to visit their overseas girlfriend. Also, you don’t have to write about your destination. I just want to know why you want to go there.
Email entries as an attached document in text or Word format to wts (at) equivocality.net by April 30th 2009. They will be judged by myself and my writer friends, the winner to be announced on May 15th 2009.
Send the $5 USD entry fee via PayPal to wts (at) equivocality.net
To keep things fair, I will not consider pieces I know to be written by friends or acquaintances. What this means is that if you know me, you must anonymize your submission (including your email address!)
Entries must be previously unpublished, there is a limit of one entry per author, and the ticket is limited to $2000 US. I will work with you to book the cheapest available round-trip ticket, based on departure and return dates given to me by the winner. I will try to accomodate these dates and other preferences as much as possible, but I reserve the right to shift each date plus or minus up to a week, and to make other choices such as routing and airline, in order to find the best fare. Other travel requirements, such as additional destinations or an open return date, may be accommodated if the winner wishes to make up the difference in cost.
By submitting a piece, you grant me (Jonathan Stray) limited web-publishing rights if it wins, specifically the right to display it on equivocality.net and any other sites of I may have editorial control over. I reserve no other rights. If someone sees your work here and wants to publish it, fantastic.
All decisions are final, and by submitting a piece you agree that I am under no obligation to award any prize at all. I have no funding, no committees, no mandate. I’m doing this just because I think it’s a good idea, so let’s keep it simple.