Flash Fiction (also called micro-fiction or short-shorts) presents a simple challenge: tell a story with all the classical elements: a beginning, middle and end, a conflict and resolution, a credible protagonist.. but do so in a very limited number of words. Fire up your favourite web search engine. There are plenty of tutorials and guidelines available online, as well as excellent examples of the genre.

Flash Fiction is now in its fourth year at the Kala Ghoda contests, though previous contests have allowed longer submissions.

Theme

Cheating.

Deadline

Midnight (Indian Standard Time), 8th February, 2009.

Rules and Conditions

Please re-read and edit your entry before you submit. If you discover an error only after you get your acknowledgement email, and then resubmit a corrected entry, Our contest engine may delete both entries as duplicates. If our screening jury finds almost identical entries that have slipped past the contest engine, they will delete both entries. Please also do not even think of emailing us and asking us to edit your entry in the contest database. We’ll just delete your entry and won’t tell you we’ve done so.

Please do not put any personally identifying information in the body of your entry. By this we mean no byline, signature, credit line, copyright notice or symbol. If you have filled out the fields for name, email address and phone number, never fear, your entry is linked to that data by the system. The body of your entry is all our jury will see, and all that they want to see. Entries that ignore this will be seen to be trying to influence the jury, and will be disqualified.

Different word processors frequently have different ways of counting words. If your word processor tells you you have X number of words, and our contest engine’s word count says you have exceeded X, we’re sorry, but our contest engine rules. Any emails to the contest organisers or contest admin complaining about this or asking that we change the way our word processor works or insisting that your entry be accepted despite it exceeding our word count will result in the instant deletion of all entries associated with your email address.

The contest is open to anyone, anywhere, with the exception of the jury and their immediate families.
Note, however, that you must have a bank account and mailing address in India, or, if you win, be able to nominate someone in India to receive your prize.

Entries must be in English

Entries must be not more than 55 words long.

Entries must be your own, original work, and previously unpublished anywhere, in print or online. (We interpret “published” to mean that there was some form of editorial or jury selection and/or payment involved. So work that appeared on a personal blog or unmoderated forum is okay, but something that won you a prize somewhere is not. Something that may have been selected to be printed in a newspaper is published, whether you got paid for it or not.)

Multiple entries are permitted. Do not duplicate entries, however. We will delete all copies of your entry from the system if you flood it.

There is no entry fee.

Submissions remain the intellectual property of the entrants, but by submitting an entry, you give the the Kala Ghoda Association, the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival and its Sponsors, and Caferati permission to use your entry, with acknowledgement, but with no payment to you, in their websites, as part of Press Releases (where they may be reproduced by media organisations), and in a possible special booklet or CD featuring the best of the Festival.

The decisions of the jury are final and binding, and no correspondence will be entertained regarding the jury’s decisions.

Jury

Caferati’s editors will screen the initial entries to keep the long list to a reasonable number. In the second round of judging, they will be joined by:

Samit Basu is the author of The Simoqin Prophecies, The Manticore’s Secret, and The Unwaba Revelations (Penguin). He also writes comics, and has worked as a journalist and columnist.

Altaf Tyrewala earned a BBA from Baruch College, New York. His critically-acclaimed debut novel No God In Sight (Penguin India, 2005), has been translated into Marathi, German, French, Spanish, Dutch and Italian, and it has also been published in USA and Canada. He is a freelance contributor to several magazines and newspapers. Tyrewala’s short stories have been published in numerous national and international anthologies. He will be editing Mumbai Noir, a forthcoming title from Akashic Books, Brooklyn. He is currently working on his second book.

Indrajit Hazra is a writer and a journalist. His most recent novel, The Bioscope Man, was published by Penguin India last year. His column, Red Herring, comes out in the Hindustan Times every Sunday. He lives in New Delhi.

Naresh Fernandes is the editor in chief of Time Out India, which has editions in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. He has previously worked with The Associated Press and The Times of India in Mumbai, and The Wall Street Journal in New York. His journalism and essays have appeared in The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, Man’s World, Transition, The New Republic, Letras Libres, Wespennest, the Suddeutsche Zeitung, Culturefront and Citylimits, among other forums. He is the co-editor, with Jerry Pinto, of Bombay Meri Jaan (Penguin, 2003), an anthology of writing about Mumbai.

Prizes

Prizes worth approximately Rs 3000, Rs 2000, and Rs 1000 to be won.

Winners will be announced on the evening of 15th February, 2009, at the David Sasson Library Garden. Exact time will be confirmed.

Updates

All updates via the Caferati Contests newsgroup. Please make sure you’re subscribed.

How to enter

Sorry, this contest is now closed. We hope to see you at next year’s contests. The Caferati Contests newsgroup will keep you informed about any other contests we run, so do please stay subscribed.