With funds donated by Angel City Press from the sales of the My California, a collection of essays by twenty-seven of California’s finest writers, The California Arts Council is sponsoring a short story writing contest. The purpose of this contest is to encourage young people to use the knowledge of their lives and emotional journeys to create literature.

Write a short story that expresses an event or time in your life when all your emotions were clear to you—a time when you said to yourself: “I need to remember this.” You may write a glory story, or a meaningful realization; you may write about a painful experience, or a loving one. This is an opportunity for you to express the whole experience through your writing, exploring what your experience was like from the inside out. Your story must have a beginning, middle and an end, but remember that it doesn’t have to have a conclusion. The purpose is to weave a story about an experience, how you felt about it and how you sensed others felt about it. Describe your emotional journey, including all the small aspects of the environment surrounding you during your experience, noting colors, tastes, smells, time, location, etc. Stop and sense all the feelings—longings, confusions, angers, and joys, and describe each feeling at the moment of each action in the story. Then let the story shape your writing—read it aloud to people to help re-live your ideas and then add them if they help the story. Be as specific as possible when you want the reader to get close to the real moment of a significant event in the story. The key to writing Fiction this way is to take a real experience and then give it a life of its’ own on paper. The stories will be first judged for their ability to evoke the moment of a personal experience and a sense of meaning or depth of feeling. Then, each story will be reviewed for your personal style.

California High School Juniors are eligible. The following counties are eligible to apply for the 2008 My California Story Slam pilot project: Alameda, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Fresno, Humboldt, Los Angeles, Madera, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Nevada, Placer, Santa Clara, Sacramento, San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Siskiyou, Sonoma, Tuolumne, Ventura, and Yuba.

The post office postmark deadline for submissions is June 2, 2008.

•  Any submissions postmarked after June 2, 2008 will be deemed ineligible.
•  Students must reside in a pilot county at the time of application. (see above).
•  Teachers must make any inquiries to their Local Arts Council or the California Arts Council about the project before the deadline. For a listing of local arts councils go to: http://www.cac.ca.gov/programs/files/SLPDirectory.pdf

Please submit both a hard and electronic copy of your story to the following addresses:

Hard Copy:

Kristin Margolis
My California Story Slam Coordinator
Literature Program
California Arts Council
1300 I Street, Suite 930,
Sacramento, CA 95814

Electronic Copy:

Send a copy of your story, as an email attachment, to storyslam@caartscouncil.com

•  Please put your name and school name in the subject line of the email (Joe Murphy—San Juan High School). Please do not put My California Story Slam in the subject line of your email.
• Email attachment should be in Microsoft Word or PDF format

•  All stories must be no more than 800 Words.
•  Only one story may be submitted per student.
•  Hard and Email copies of stories must be typed in 12 point Ariel typeface and hard copies must be printed on white 8 1/2 x 11 on regular bond paper. Do not print double-sided pages—single-sided only.
•  Stories written in languages other than English must be accompanied by an English translation.
•  No drawings, illustrations or alternate formats except Braille are allowed.

Winners will be announced in September. Each winner will receive a $500 monetary award, and each winner’s school will receive $500 for the school library.

Winners will be asked to accept awards at a public meeting and allow their stories to be used by the California Arts Council and its’ designees for promotion and publishing.

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