DeScribe

We are holding this competition in conjunction with Verandah, Deakin's literary journal. Don't know about Verandah yet? Well, if you're interested in writing and getting published, you should check out their site at:

http://www.deakin.edu.au/arts-ed/verandah-res/index.html

What this means is that the Verandah editors will be judging your entries for this month's prize. Also, your entry will be considered for inclusion in this year's edition of the journal. Two competitions for the price of one (which is free, by the way)! You can't lose.

This month, we are searching for:

Short stories under 1000 words, or
Poems with fewer than 50 lines.

It's that easy ... and if you're worried about the wordcount, remember that Hemingway wrote a six word short story: "For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn." We'll have comps for longer stories in the coming months.

Want to submit? Then you have to follow these easy steps:

1) Save your story/ poem as: Story/ poem name - Your Name in .doc or .rtf format
2) Make sure that your name doesn't appear anywhere else on the story - get rid of titles and headers/ footers
3) Attach it to a blank email
4) Make the email subject: Entry for March DeScribe/ Verandah literary competition
5) In the body text of the email, include your name, address and phone number, as well as your Deakin Student ID number
6) Send it to [url]verandah@deakin.edu.au[/url] by midnight, 31st March 2009. We'll announce the winners by email, and here.

Easy! But wait, there's more. Please note the following:
1) Entries must be from current Deakin students only. That's most of us, though.
2) The story/ poem must not have been previously published, or won an award. We're after your fresh stuff.
3) Only one submission per person will be accepted - there's always next month.

What about the prizes? Up for grabs this month:

$50 BOOKS4U voucher for the winner
2 runners-up prizes - copies of Verandah 23

Don't forget that you're also competing for inclusion to Verandah 24, and any subsequent annual prizes that they might also offer.

Get cracking and good luck!

Hello,
Just wondering what's happening with the monthly comp. Is there going to be another one for April?? If so, is the topic (or lack thereof) the same?? Who won March??

I know Melissa beat me to the punch, but I think it'd be good to let us know the results of the competition as soon as possible. It's nearing the end of April, so I think we've been waiting for quite a while.

If there were a lot of entries and you're still reading over them, it's understandable, but if that's the case or something else is wrong, could you please post so somewhere on DeScribe? Thankyou for listening to me complain.

We're sorry that there's been delays with getting the first results back to you and I can tell you that we will announce them on Monday 27th April. The Verandah team, who are judging the comp, have been flat out with the journal - but they're just finalising their decisions as we speak.

There has also been some problems with the DeScribe execs. One has been seriously (as in hospitalisation) ill, one has had to move house in the middle of term and one has had to work and study full time, leaving one person to man (person? But "one person to person" sounds silly ) the DeScribe barricades.

Because of the delay in both the results and the April comp, we will be announcing a May Megacomp with more prizes, and of higher value, in the next few days. We will also be announcing a meet and greet (if Einstein's has its Liquor Licence back yet ) and another DeScribe Excursion to either The Spinning Room or WordPlay at the Dan.

Oh, uh. I can understand why the results are late then. Thanks for letting us know. I was afraid that the comp had been cancelled 'coz of a lack of submissions or something, like the Flasher

Hopefully everything works out better for May!!

Hi everyone.

The Verandah crew (our judges) tell us that the DeScribe Literary Competition received a number of excellent entries. This time, for runners-up, they went with:

Susie Chong's short story 'Enlightenment'
Deb Wain's poem 'Little Pig'

Susie and Deb both receive a copy of Verandah 23.

Our winner was:

Amber Beilharz for her beautiful concrete poem, 'Caricature of a Cicada's Song'

Amber will receive a $75 BOOKS4U voucher.

We'll be contacting the winners to get permission to reproduce their entries, right here.

Congratulations to our winner and runners-up, and thanks again to everyone who entered. Details of the May megaComp (with two major prizes and four copies of V23) will be sent out shortly. If you're wondering what the entry conditions will be, check out the submission guidelines at the Verandah website: anything they'll take is legal tender for this upcoming comp.