PCR is looking for fiction and feature articles that capture the flavor of great port cities around the world, delivering the atmosphere of travel and change along with human depth and introspection. Whether you write personal essays, travel articles, or arts and culture feature stories, if the writing is great and has a strong tie-in to port cities related themes, it could be the right fit. We're a paying market currently at the rate of $50 per 1,000 word article and a comparable rate for fiction. Articles should be pitched before they're produced but fiction may be submitted on spec. Please don't hesitate to email mark@portcitiesreview.com if you have questions.

Flash Fiction Contest

- Best New Orleans Story - $12.00

 

 

 

 

In 1,000 words or fewer, tell us your best New Orleans story. Whether you survived a fun trip to Mardi Gras or survived Hurricane Katrina, take us to the heart of your story fast and make it unforgettable. No room for fluff in the flash fiction format. The best and most original New Orleans story wins publcation in Port Cities Review -- both online and in print -- and $200 cash!

Depending on the number and quality of submissions, as many as two additional entries in this category will receive honorable mention, publication in Port Cities Review Online, and our standard payment of $50 per 1,000 words.

$12 entry fee supports our editorial budget and operating costs. All entries must be received by midnight on March 31st.

Submit

ZINA SARO-WIWA

This piece arose from Zina Saro-Wiwa's interest in Nollywood and the African emotional landscape. The close-up of crying face is a classic nollywood trope. A trademark of the genre. The sobbing female figure, a grieving widow, a repentant woman of the night, the dutiful but put-upon wife. Almost certainly inspired by soap opera, but popular because of it’s resonance with the Nigerian psyche, the performance of pain – close up – forms the emotional backbone of Nollywood film. For the video installation, Mourning Class, Zina Saro-Wiwa has filmed a selection of Nigerian actresses crying-on-cue. They are Golda John, Esosa Edosomwan, Ebbe Bassey and Nollywood superstars Kate Henshaw-Nuttal and Dakore Egbuson. Each actress was sat in front of the camera, bearing their shoulders and covering their heads and were asked to cry when prompted by the director. They needed to produce real tears and had to stare at the camera as much as possible during the process turning their emotions into a true performance as well as a test of endurance.

Nigerians are naturally very performative people. Everyday life and speech is like theatre and a delight to behold. How then does one act when in front of a camera? Mourning Class speaks to this dilemma. Nollywood’s hasty productions, improvised scripts and lack of psycholigcal realism make it hard for actors to work this out and ply their trade most effectively. Mourning Class represents the synthesis of realism and performance. The work explores the role of performance in expressing grief in Nigeria and Africa, drawing the viewer into the territory between the emotive and the emotional. The minimal, ghostly sound is almost an echo and leaves room for the viewer to engage with the physical performance of grief. The lack of narrative and context but direct engagement of the subject also draws out the viewer’s own personal narratives engineering a form of catharsis.

 

 

 

 

Zina Saro-Wiwa’s ‘Phyllis’

and the subversion of

Nollywood cinema

 

FEBRUARY 28, 2013 BY JUSTIN SCOTT 

Zina Saro-Wiwa’s “alt-Nollywood” short film, Phyllis, is one of the weirder fifteen minutes of film I’ve seen in some time. “Using Nollywood to subvert Nollywood,” it is an atmospheric, impressionistic, and haunting film, chronicling Phyllis’s emotional states as she takes the wigs that form such a huge part of her identity on and off.  

A surname like Saro-Wiwa brings a certain set of expectations which Zina wisely avoids throughout her work. And while I originally thought she might be benefiting from her name, this is a unique and engaging film that’ll throw you for a loop as you watch. Experimental and unrelenting, it relies heavily on its soundtrack, juxtaposing empty space and powerful heartbeat thumps against popular songs from both the West and Nigeria. When Phyllis puts her wig on, everything is cool, and we’re eased into a more typically Nollywood film vibe. But when she takes her wigs off, her eyes roll back into her head, and as viewers, we’re reeling along with Phyllis as she descends into the emptiness of her wiglessness.

As Saro-Wiwa explained in an interview with Christian Niedan over at Camera in the Sun, there’s a “syntheticness of Nollywood that I’m appalled by, but also attracted to. I want to represent that, so I invented this character through which I could express my love and hate and fear and loathing of the syntheticness of Nigeria and this practice of wig-wearing… ultimately, Phyllis represents the gap between our true essence and the plasticity… she is ultimately doomed to a cycle of longing and short-term satisfaction. But people read all sorts of things into Phyllis, and she means different things to different people. I am totally open to interpretation of what this film means. I’m not even sure I know what the film fully means. And I made it…”

The film closes with a particularly unsettling gothic image that reaffirms the fact that this is not your typical Nollywood film — not by a long shot. And though Zina approaches Nollywood from the perspective of an insider-outsider, having lived in the UK and worked for the BBC, that’s a welcome development that more homegrown Nollywood filmmakers would do well to emulate.

The film was originally part of the “Sharon Stone in Abuja” exhibit that went up at Location One Gallery in Manhattan in November 2010. It is now being shown as part ofVideo Slink Uganda, an exhibition in New York City of a run of experimental films on video culture.

>via: http://africasacountry.com/2013/02/28/phyllis-and-the-subversion-of-nollywood...

__________________________

 

"I felt that black

did not define me, Africa did."

Film-maker and journalist Zina Saro-Wiwa’s documentary This is My Africa was broadcast on television sets across the US in February 2010. In it, Saro-Wiwa talks with more than 20 Africans and people interested in Africa to reveal their personal stories and experiences of African culture across the continent.

Here, in an exclusive online interview with Billie McTernan, she talks about personal identity, activism and the future of African art and cinema.

The Africa Report: What is your most memorable experience about Africa?

Zina Saro-Wiwa: Pretty much any market place I have visited. Many miniature dramas and comedies are played out in these spaces, and it’s quite intoxicating to be in the middle of it all.

Growing up in the United Kingdom with Nigerian parents, did you ever have difficulties to identify yourself culturally?

Zina Saro-Wiwa: Growing up I did not really worry about it. I was just a Nigerian who happened to live in the UK. Every summer was spent in Nigeria, so that further cemented our Nigerianness. My father never allowed us to call ourselves British, and I never really sought to define myself in that way. It was only when I started travelling around the world by myself that telling people I was purely Nigerian led them to believe I had grown up there. The fact was and is that I am partly British, too, whether I liked it or not. But the identity struggle I had more recently around five years ago was with the idea of ‘black’.

Once I began to accept that I was unavoidably British I had to contend with this idea of what it meant to be ‘black British’. But I felt that black did not define me, Africa did. This is because black in the UK context often meant Caribbean British and it did not reflect my own personal Nigerian history. So for that reason I have now settled on British-Nigerian, as it is simply the most accurate description of what I am.

Given your background as the daughter of a extremely well-regarded political activist, the environmental campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa, have you ever felt politically inclined?

Zina Saro-Wiwa: I have always had my own ‘activism’ which is related to growing Africa’s capability to define herself and tell her own stories on her own terms.

What change would you like to see in Nigeria, and moreover Africa, in the next 20 years?

Zina Saro-Wiwa:I would like to see our natural resources prospected more cleanly and efficiently, and I would like to see the money from our primary resources lead to better transport, communications and education. Most of my hopes and dreams for Africa are extremely basic, despite my own personal focus on the cultural aspects of our development. But we cannot hope to have peace and development without a fairer distribution of resources and if people are not educated. It is when people feel they have enough and when they understand each other better because they have heard each others stories enough times, that wider problems like corruption can be tackled most effectively. Beyond this, I want to see African urban cultural industries become more powerful, plentiful and professional.

How has the reception been to your documentary This is My Africa?

Zina Saro-Wiwa: 
The reaction has nearly always been very positive and this goodwill has propelled the film, it seems. It seems to have a momentum of its own. I organised a screening at the Barbican Arts Centre in London in 2008 and since then the film has really sold itself. Film festivals, one by one, started requesting it and the same happened with [the US cable television channel] HBO. I have felt tremendously lucky, as my working life rarely pans out like this.

I reckon that people are ready to hear alternative African narratives. Also, the thing I always wanted to happen happened, whereby people have told me that they have been inspired to go out and buy the books, music and films talked about in the documentary. I wanted to offer people a variety of ways to connect with Africa and this seems to be happening. So, overall the reaction has been very positive.

What was the last book you read?

Zina Saro-Wiwa: The last great book I read was A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd. I wasn’t expecting to like it. Since I was young, I have always thought there is something quite provocative about the title and I wasn’t sure what I would find. But that provocation turns out to be a delightful, as well as profound, conceit. The idea of it really makes you think and laugh. A wonderful and surprising read. I laughed throughout but also cried at the very end.

What are your personal plans for the future?

Zina Saro-Wiwa: I am in development for two more This is My Africa films. I am also developing a contemporary art show, that will take place in Manhattan, that I am super excited about and that relates to African film culture. I will be making an experimental video for this show.

Girl Overcomes Sexual Abuse,

Homelessness & Cancer

to Break Track Record,

Earn Scholarship

Latipha Cross, a young woman who ran track in high school, overcame sexual abuse, physical abuse, homelessness and two forms of cancer to earn an athletic scholarship. After years of beatings at the hands of her adoptive parents, Cross endured homelessness–then more sexual assault from her biological father–before getting her free ride to college. Her college, Eastern Michigan University, is paying for her path toward becoming

 

The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy. Superconnected companies are red, very connected companies are yellow. The size of the dot represents revenue (Image: PLoS One)

 

Revealed

– the capitalist network

that runs the world

• Updated 13:15 24 October 2011
  by Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie
  

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based."

Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world's economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy - whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.

The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "real" economy - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

John Driffill of the University of London, a macroeconomics expert, says the value of the analysis is not just to see if a small number of people controls the global economy, but rather its insights into economic stability.

Concentration of power is not good or bad in itself, says the Zurich team, but the core's tight interconnections could be. As the world learned in 2008, such networks are unstable. "If one [company] suffers distress," says Glattfelder, "this propagates."

"It's disconcerting to see how connected things really are," agrees George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a complex systems expert who has advised Deutsche Bank.

Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), warns that the analysis assumes ownership equates to control, which is not always true. Most company shares are held by fund managers who may or may not control what the companies they part-own actually do. The impact of this on the system's behaviour, he says, requires more analysis.

Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make it more stable. By finding the vulnerable aspects of the system, economists can suggest measures to prevent future collapses spreading through the entire economy. Glattfelder says we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Sugihara says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to discourage this risk.

One thing won't chime with some of the protesters' claims: the super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. "Such structures are common in nature," says Sugihara.

Newcomers to any network connect preferentially to highly connected members. TNCs buy shares in each other for business reasons, not for world domination. If connectedness clusters, so does wealth, says Dan Braha of NECSI: in similar models, money flows towards the most highly connected members. The Zurich study, says Sugihara, "is strong evidence that simple rules governing TNCs give rise spontaneously to highly connected groups". Or as Braha puts it: "The Occupy Wall Street claim that 1 per cent of people have most of the wealth reflects a logical phase of the self-organising economy."

So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. The real question, says the Zurich team, is whether it can exert concerted political power. Driffill feels 147 is too many to sustain collusion. Braha suspects they will compete in the market but act together on common interests. Resisting changes to the network structure may be one such common interest.

When this article was first posted, the comment in the final sentence of the paragraph beginning "Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power…" was misattributed.

The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies

1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
41. ING Groep NV
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
45. Vereniging Aegon
46. BNP Paribas
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
48. Resona Holdings Inc
49. Capital Group International Inc
50. China Petrochemical Group Company

* Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used

Graphic: The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy

(Data: PLoS One) 

 

__________________________

 

Kenya's new imperialists

On Monday Kenyans elect a new generation of leaders, forged not by the independence struggle but western corporate greed

 

 Ngugi wa Thiong'o

The Guardian, Wednesday 27 February 2013 

 

A man walks past a wall sprayed with graffiti reading 'We need peace in Kenya' in Nairobi's Kibera district on 27 February 2013. Photograph: Phil Moore/AFP/Getty Images

When Kenya goes to the polls on Monday, it will mark a generational change – no matter who wins. For the first time in its history, the country will be run by a leadership with hardly any direct experience of colonialism. There are risks to this development: the new leadership might trivialise what it means to be colonised, and the insidious ways in which imperialism is reproduced.

The outgoing president, Mwai Kĩibaki, is the last of the generation that led the country to independence, and for whom, whatever the policy, imperialism and anti-colonial resistance were not just slogans. They had seen blood in the streets and mass incarceration; the Hola massacre was mere smoke at the gates of hell. The first lady, Lucy Kĩbaki, was brutally tortured.

For them, Churchill – who presided over the concentration camps and villages and brutal mass relocations of people – can never be a hero. And whatever their shortcomings, they still have memories of the heroic deeds and sacrifices of ordinary Kenyans of whatever ethnic hue; they know in their bones that it was the unity of the Kenyan people that made independence possible.

The next leaders will not be encumbered by memories of humiliation and triumphant resistance. This may make them act with more confidence relative to Europe and the outside world. But it may also make them gullible to the machinations of the corporate west, without regard to a national vision. Chillingly, Kenya is on the brink of commercial oil production, and western firms are lining up for a slice of the cake.

We can get glimpses of the future by looking back to the last parliament. Asked to set up local tribunals to deal with crimes emanating from the horrific 2007/8 electoral violence, the MPs vehemently rejected the idea and shouted: "Don't be vague; let's go to The Hague." When the Hague-based international criminal court responded with summons, the politicians shouted: "Imperialism! We are no longer a colony!"

The rejection of homegrown institutions as vehicles for redress was the main abetter of that violence they refused to address internally. You cannot say the elections are rigged, and then refuse to utilise, even exhaust, the available democratic channels, however flawed they might be. The muscular tension that had built up during the hotly contested elections had no established channels for release. National institutions may not be the best, but they are often the basis of sober evaluations of claims and counter-claims.

Their contempt for national institutions can be seen in other ways.

Throughout the anti-colonial struggle and into the first years of independence, there were well established political parties, with differing visions: institutions with policies and clear guidelines on electing and rejecting leaders. The political class destroyed these. The contending parties in Monday's elections are all paper parties – or less politely they are regional mafia blocks under a boss. The party is the boss and the boss is the party: no history, no institutional memory, nothing to help regulate political behaviour and practice even within the boss party.

Some of the more infamous acts of the last parliament include passing a motion to ban African languages in official premises; a rural peasant would now have to bring an interpreter to a government office to have his needsattended to.

Moreover, more than 200 MPs – already some of the most highly paid in the world – voted themselves a severance package that included over $80,000, diplomatic passports for themselves and their families, armed protection for life, and state burials for each of them. The president did not sign the bill, but it gives a clue as to the ruling mentality – a mentality that looks at the state as a looters' paradise.

This mentality finds a good partner in the bribing culture of the corporate west. In the US, bribery is official in the system of registered lobbyists. But there are the established institutions of the press and the courts that sometimes help cushion the impact of the fallout from corporate greed. For Kenya and Africa, however, the combination of local and outside raiders is deadly for the country and emerging democracies.

I am cautiously optimistic that there will be peaceful acceptance of the election results. But I fear that the governing class will continue to be no more than mimic men – copying their western counterparts in greed and contempt for the regular folk, while happily shouting "imperialism" when the slogan helps them cover up their looting tracks in the face of an angry populace.

__________________________

La Bamba:

The Afro Mexican-Story

Produced by Marlon Bishop • Last aired February 28, 2013

Much has been made of Mexico’s rich blend of Spanish and indigenous customs, but recently, there’s been a surge of interest in exploring Mexico’s “Third Root”: Africa. Slavery existed Mexico much like in the rest of the Americas, but for a variety of reasons, black history in Mexico has been silenced over the years. In this Hip Deep episode, we use music to uncover that history as travel around Mexico in search of Afro-Mexican sounds. First we’ll visit the Costa Chica of Guerrero, where small communities of Afro-Mexicans continue to practice age-old music and dance traditions. Then, we’ll visit the port of Veracruz to learn about the history of the Afro-Mexican son jarocho style, made famous by Ritchie Valens’ 1958 cover of the traditional song “La Bamba.” Then, we’ll visit the dance halls of Mexico City, where Afro-Cuban danzón lives on long after fading from the bandstands of Havana. Along the way, we’ll speak with top scholars in the field, including Ben Vinson III, Alejandro Madrid, and Anita Gonzalez.

Interview:

Historian Ben Vinson III on Afro-Mexican History

Ben Vinson III is a historian at Johns Hopkins University and perhaps the world’s leading scholar on Afro-Mexican history. He has published several books about Afro-Mexicans, including Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico (Read More)

From The Blog:

Afro-Mexico Road Trip #1: Introducing Afro-Mexico

Against all the advice of friends and family both in Mexico and the US, we rented a puttering old car and drove around the country, tracing Afro-Mexican music and history. (Read More)

Afro-Mexico Road Trip #2: The Chilena

First stop on our trip was the Costa Chica, a region of Mexico’s Pacific coast known for having the largest Afro-Mexican presence in the country. We came here to speak with Los Gallardos, a family of musicians who have been maintaining criollo musical traditions for generations. (Read More)

Afro-Mexico Road Trip #3: Cumbia, Costa Chica Style

“Anthropologists always come here looking for something different – the chilena, the corridos, the artesa dance,” he said. “And they don’t bother to look at the styles that are more relevant. Cumbia, he said, is the rhythm I really have to look at if I want to know about musical life in the Costa Chica. (Read More)

More Afro-Mexico Road Trip posts coming soon!

Playlist 

If you liked the music we played in the show but want to here more, we’ve created a Spotify playlist with almost all the tunes we played on air plus a few extras. Check it out below.

 

 

Submission Guidelines | At-a-Glance

We welcome your original art, prose and poetry submissions!

We encourage original work from published and unpublished writers and artists of all backgrounds. We are delighted to announce that we are holding a short-story contest in honor of our debut issue—The Flying Elephants Short-Story Prize—with a total prize fund of $5,000, thanks to the generous support of the multimedia artist behind “Ashes and Snow,” Gregory Colbert. More on our Flying Elephants Prize is found here.

What We Seek

We seek works from writers and artists of all backgrounds. In all cases, we look for quality and originality of language and content.  Prose and poetry submissions must be original and previously unpublished.

• Prose includes short stories or short fiction; short-short stories or flash fiction; creative/narrative/literary nonfiction; and essay; as well as excerpts from novels or books provided they can stand-alone.
• Poetry in all its forms.
• Multimedia (visual art, photography and short film), especially visual essays; previously published art acceptable provided that the artist has retained publication rights.
• *Wildcard submissions that do not fit any of our submission categories but which you think is well-suited for our audience.

Quarterly Issue Submissions: Themes and Deadlines

Each quarterly issue is organized around a theme, there are no word or line limits, and we encourage the submission of poetry series and visual arts and photo-essays consistent with the theme. From humor to haunting character studies, a broad range of styles and approaches is welcome on our pages, and contributors are encouraged to freely interpret our themes. We hope that submissions embody a wild diversity of perspective, voice, and style; and we suspect that the most powerful submissions will wear the stated theme lightly. The themes and deadlines for future issues are as follows:

• Debut Issue: “And we were hungry….,” or “Hunger.” | Deadline April 30, 2013

• Issue #02: “The Chief Human Good,” or “Happiness.” | Deadline June 30, 2013.

• Issue #03: “Money.” | Deadline September 30, 2013.

• Issue #04: “The Best Is Yet to Come” & “Disenchanted.” | Deadline December 03, 2013

• Issue #05: Open Theme. | Deadline March 31, 2014.

Homepage Features Submissions

Because AndWeWereHungry is conceived entirely as an online market rather than a traditional print magazine, we have opted for a publishing model that balances the considerably longer cycle necessary to edit and curate the beautifully crafted works we want to promote and the online reader’s desire for fresh and timely content updated regularly in a short cycle. For our homepage’s non-themed regular features, we welcome rolling submissions of works under one-thousand words of flash fiction, personal essays, lively commentary, reviews, travel writing, humor, interviews, etc., and up to sixteen lines of short poetry.

Response Time

After our debut issue, response time is approximately three to twelve weeks as appropriate to the Quarterly Issue or Homepage Features submission. We apologize for the possible longer response time prior to launch.

Submission Method

• We accept only electronic or online submissions via Submittable, our submissions manager here.

• Simultaneous submissions are fine, and if you need to withdraw a story you can do so via our submissions manager.

• Selection is blind, so please remove your name or other identifying information from your submission.  Each submission receives a unique anonymous tracking number in our system; but your name and contact information is provided through our submissions manager.

Payments & Rights

AndWeWereHungry acquires exclusive first-time Internet publishing rights:

• All selected work will be published on this website.

• Copyright remains with you, we ask for one-time publication rights and permission to archive your work on the site. We also though kindly request 90 days exclusivity from the date of publication. If the work is subsequently published in another venue, we ask that its publication in AndWeWereHungry be acknowledged.

• While there are no contest entry or submission reading fees, we are currently a NONPAYING market. And outside of our Flying Elephants Short-Story Prize, we offer only the glory of seeing your work showcased online in very good company!

Still have questions? Submissions FAQ are answered here.

Ready to submit your fiction, nonfiction, poetry or visual art? Submit Here!

Thank you for considering AndWeWereHungry as a home for your work!

2013 Rules and Prize Details

The Bristol Short Story Prize is an international competition open to all unpublished and published, U.K. and non-U.K. based writers

20 stories will be shortlisted for the 2013 Bristol Short Story Prize.

The 20 shortlisted writers will be invited to an awards ceremony in Bristol in October 2013 when the winners will be announced and the BSSP Anthology Volume 6 will be launched. Prizes and anthologies will be sent to any shortlisted writer unable to attend the awards ceremony.

Prizes :

Ist- £1000 plus £150 Waterstone’s gift card

2nd- £700 plus £100 Waterstone’s gift card

3rd- £400 plus £100 Waterstone’s gift card

The other 17 writers who feature on the shortlist will receive £100.

All 20 shortlisted stories will be published in both print and ebook versions of Volume 6 of the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology.

The closing date for entries is 30th April 2013.

There is an entry fee of £8 for each story submitted.

Stories can be on any theme or subject and are welcome in any style including graphic, verse or genre-based (crime, thriller, science fiction, fantasy, romance, historical etc.).

While there is a maximum word count of 4,000 words, it should be stressed that there is no minimum.

Rules

 

2013 Bristol Short Story Prize Rules

 

Please read the rules carefully before entering.

 

1. Closing date for receipt of entries is 30th April 2013 at midnight BST.

2. Entrants must be over 16 years old on the closing date, 30th April 2013.

3. The maximum length of submissions is 4,000 words and there is no minimum length. Stories can be on any theme or subject and are welcome in any style including graphic, verse or genre-based (Crime, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Historical, Romance, Children's etc..) .

4. Entries can be made online or by post. There is no geographical restriction on entry- the Bristol Short Story Prize is open to everyone, whether they are based in the UK or outside the UK. All entries should be in English. Postal entries will only be accepted as printed typescripts. There are no specific formatting requirements - font type, font size, line spacing etc.. Writers may format their work in the way they feel is most appropriate. Please send postal entry/entries to : Bristol Short Story Prize, Unit 5.16, Paintworks, Bath Road Bristol BS4 3EH

5. Authors may enter as many stories as they like. There is an entry fee of £8 for each story submitted. Payment for online entries should be made via the website. Payment for postal entries should be made by cheque. Cheque payments must be in pounds sterling and cheques should be made payable to ‘Bristol Short Story Prize Ltd.’. Each postal submission must be accompanied by an entry form.

6. Entries will not be returned. Please keep a copy. No corrections or alterations can be made after receipt.

7. Entries must be entirely the work of the entrant and must never have been previously published, in print or online (including websites, blogs, social network sites), or broadcast or won or been shortlisted in another writing competition.  Any entry found to have been plagiarised will be disqualified. Simultaneous submissions are welcome - but please let us know as soon as possible if a story is to be published elsewhere or has won a prize or been shortlisted in another writing competition.

8. Entries will be read and judged anonymously; entrants names should only appear on the entry form and not anywhere on their stories/manuscripts. The stories/manuscripts must be free of all personal information about the author. This includes age and address.

9. If you require acknowledgement of receipt of your postal entry then please enclose a stamped addressed postcard marked ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. Online entries will be acknowledged by email.

10. All entrants must agree to have their work published in the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 6, in both print and ebook formats, should they be the author of one of the 20 shortlisted stories. Authors will retain worldwide copyright on their work (including film and dramatic rights) but Bristol Short Story Prize has first publication rights to publish the 20 shortlisted stories in the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 6, in both print and ebook formats. All entrants must, also, agree to have their story published in Bristol Review of Books magazine if their story wins the 2013 Bristol Short Story Prize.

11. Each of the shortlisted authors will receive 2 free copies of the paperback version of Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 6 and will be able to purchase further copies at a discount of 50%. Any profit from the sale of the BSSP Anthology Vol. 6 will go towards developing ShortStoryVille events, our schools' projects and funding help for the Bristol Review of Books.

12. No competitor may win more than one prize. Entries will be read by a panel of professional publishers, reviewers and published writers. They will select a longlist of 40 for the judging panel. The judging panel will select the 20 stories to be published in the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 6 and the top 3 prize winning stories. The judges decision is final and no individual correspondence will be entered into. Judges or readers will not comment on individual stories or give feedback on individual stories.

13. Prizes for 2013 are: 1st-£1000 plus £150 Waterstone’s Gift Card, 2nd -£700 plus £100 Waterstone’s Gift Card, 3rd -£400 plus £100 Waterstone’s Gift Card. Each of the 17 remaining shortlisted finalists will receive £100.

14. Prizes will be awarded at the 2013 Bristol Short Story Prize Awards Ceremony in October 2013 and will be sent to any of the 20 finalists who are unable to attend the awards ceremony. Entrants will not be contacted individually about the competition results unless they are selected for the shortlist. The 2013 longlist and shortlist will be posted on the BSSP website. The longlist will be posted on the BSSP website in mid-July 2013 and the shortlist will be posted on the BSSP website by the end of July 2013. The list of prize-winners will be displayed on the website within one week after the awards ceremony.

15. Any entrant wishing to withdraw a story from the competition before the closing date of midnight (BST) 30th April 2013  will receive a full refund. Please contact us by email. We will not be able to refund any withdrawn stories after the closing date of midnight (BST) 30th April 2013.                  .                             .

16. Entry implies an acceptance of all the Bristol Short Story Prize rules. Entries that fail to comply with the entry rules and requirements may be disqualified.