Adult Creative Writing Contest

Celebrating its forty-first year, the Adult Creative Writing Contest sponsored by the Friends of the Tulsa City-County Libraries begins February 1 and ends March 31, 2018. Information about the contest including entry forms will be available on the Tulsa City-County Library Web site, available at all branch libraries, and offered in other locations.

The contest is open to any person 18 years old or older who resides, works, or attends school in Tulsa County, has a non-resident Tulsa City-County library card, and is not a member of the creative writing contest committee or judge of the contest. The manuscripts must be previously unpublished and the writer must not have received remuneration for the work submitted. The contest includes five categories: short story, children’s fiction, graphic novel, informal essay, and poetry. Descriptions of each category are in the contest brochure.

The Adult Creative Writing Contest committee includes Sloan Davis, Morgan Holmes, Sherry Leslie, Dorothy Minor, Mary Olzawski, Diane Pennington, and Travis Splawn. Judges for the contest are chosen for their expertise in the genre. The judging is completely anonymous; the cover page with the entry information is removed before the judges receive the manuscripts, thereby ensuring anonymity.

This year, the contest entry fees have changed.

1 entry: $10.00

2 entries: $18.00

3 entries: $24.00

4 entries: $30.00

5 entries: $36.00

A cash prize of $100 is awarded each first-place winner. Second-place winners will receive $50. Certificates are awarded to all first and second place winners and those receiving honorable mention.

All entrants are invited to attend the awards ceremony along with their families, friends and everyone else interested in creative writing. The ceremony is Saturday, May 12 at 2:30 in Aaronson Auditorium, Central Library, 400 Civic Center. At the awards ceremony, first-place winners will read a five-minute selection from their winning work. Photos will be taken of the winners and posted on the Tulsa City-County Libraries Web site.

Julia Thomas, author of The English Boys and Penhale Wood, will speak at the awards ceremony about her entry into writing and publishing a novel. She wrote and submitted three novels to publishers before her success in publishing The English Boys. After hearing Dennis Lehane tell participants at the OSU-Tulsa Celebration of books that he had written “five of the worst novels in the English language and each one was too specialized regarding characterization, plot and dialogue,” Thomas thought, “I’m only one or two rejected novels away from making it.”

What sparks an idea for a writer? Many things can trigger a story in a writer’s mind. For Julia Thomas, a Google search of one of her favorite actors produced a photograph of the actor at a wedding standing next to the bride and groom. In her writer’s mind, Thomas saw a story in that photograph and she wanted to be the one to write it. Thus, her first published novel, The English Boys, was born.

For more information on the Adult Creative Writing Contest, see the Tulsa City-County Libraries Web site, www.TulsaLibrary.org/Friends, call 918.549.7419, or email Tara.farrar@tulsalibrary.org.