Expanding to include Japanese-language and tumblr lucahyouth divisions, Little Tokyo Historical Society (LTHS) seeks fictional short stories for its second annual “Imagine Little Tokyo” writing contest. The deadline is Jan. 31, 2015.
The first-place winners of the English- and Japanese-language competitions will each receive a cash award of $600; the winner of the youth division (18 and younger) will get $400. The purpose of the contest is to raise awareness of Little Tokyo through a creative story that takes place there. The story has to be fiction and depict the current, past or future of Little Tokyo as part of Los Angeles.
“We had great success with our inaugural contest this year,” said Bill Watanabe, chair of the Imagine Little Tokyo Committee. “As there is obviously great interest in writing stories which celebrate our community here in Los Angeles, we wanted to expand the contest to include entries written in Japanese as well as encourage young people to participate.”
The winning stories will appear in The Rafu Shimpoand Discover Nikkei website. A public award ceremony and readings are also planned in 2015.
Financial supporters of the contest include Sansei Legacy, other organizations and individual donors.
For more information and guidelines, refer to the Little Tokyo Historical Society website, www.littletokyohs.org.
Guidelines
* The story must be original, fictional, written in either Japanese or English by the submitting author and never been published (even online).
* The same story submitted in a previous year cannot be resubmitted.
* The setting of the story should be in Little Tokyo — either past, present or future.
* Submitted manuscript should be 2,500 words or less for English or 5,000 ji or less for Japanese, and have a title.
* File should be a Microsoft Word doc, docx, or rtf.
* Please use 12-point font, preferably Times Roman or Courier type.
* Please remove any mention of your name from your short story, including headers.
* The short story manuscript must be submitted digitally as an email attachment to [email protected] (include SHORT STORY in the subject line). In the e-mail message, include your name, phone number and age if under 18. Upon its receipt, LTHS will email you a contest agreement form with instructions on where to mail the signed agreement.
* Submissions need to be emailed by Jan. 31, 2015, 12 midnight PST. NO EXCEPTIONS.
* Immediate family members of judges (first-round or final) are ineligible.
* The youth category applies only to the English-language submittals; youth may submit stories in Japanese but must compete with the adults.