Free contest, The Patricia Sherman Memorial Writing Contest, top prize: 3 winners of $100 (Michigan)

Deadline: 31 January 2011

2011 RULES

Three Age Groups: 5th – 12th grade, Young Adult (up to 24 y/o) and Adult (25 and older)

Teachers: We appreciate teachers encouraging their students to enter their best work. Because our judges are volunteers, we ask that you DO NOT have your entire class submit a class project. If a student's work needs improvement, yet the student is adamant about pursuing their interest in writing, help them with spelling and grammatical errors to improve their chances.

Prizes: A total of nine prize packages will be awarded. Winners in each age group will be selected for: First Place, Second Place and Third Place.

Cost: Our sponsors have generously donated funds or gift certificates so this contest can be free of charge. Please let them know that their generosity is appreciated.

Who can Enter: All residents of Michigan – as long as they are at least old enough to be in the 5th grade. Judges cannot enter the contest, but everyone else is welcome to. College students studying out-of-state and active duty military who are serving out-of-state but still maintain their permanent residency in Michigan are also allowed to enter.

Entry Method: All entries will be online between 1Nov10 through 31Jan11. See entry form for more information and options. NO PAPER ENTRIES WILL BE ACCEPTED. With no entry fee charged, we do not have the funds to pay someone to put the entries into proper file format. If you are unable to do it yourself, you are responsible to get someone to help you, or pay someone to do it, so we can continue to keep this a fee-free contest for the rest of the entrants. Sorry, absolutely NO exceptions – so don't ask! All the people involved in this project do it on a volunteer basis and they will not be asked to spend more time to do what is the responsibility of the entrant.

Acknowledgement: Once your entry has been received, it will be checked to make sure it is complete and complies by the rules. Once everything has been verified, you will be sent an email acknowledging the entry. If you do not receive verification that your entry was received within seven days, please send an email to ask about its status. We had one entry that took a full month to get to us through cyber space, so it is important that you be responsible to make sure your entry has been received if you do not receive an entry number.

Entrants who fail to complete the entry guidelines will be asked once to update their entry. If the entry remains incomplete as of midnight 31Jan11 it will be disqualified.

Original Works: Only original works by the entrant are accepted. Plagiarism is a crime and no plagiarized works will be accepted. No entries submitted in the 2009 and 2010 contests can be resubmitted – although we hope the authors will submit new work. No previously published works are accepted.

Entry Dates: Entries can be submitted starting 1Nov10 until midnight 31Jan11.

Number of Entries: There is a limit of one entry per person. If a person enters more than one entry under different names - it will void all entries by that person and make them ineligible to win any prizes.

Entry Formats: All entries must be in .doc or .txt formats. NO .docx files will be accepted. Sorry, we must work with what our volunteers can open. Entries and entry forms copied and pasted into the body of an email will be accepted – but no formatting changes will be made to the entry when it is put into a .doc document.

Entry Length: Each entry must be no more than 1,000 words. It can be as few as two words if you can write them in a way to make the entry powerful enough to warrant winning. Entries can be fiction, non-fiction, scripts (for screen or stage), personal essays, memoirs, song lyrics, poems or any other form of written expression. The only genre not accepted is erotica. No profanity is allowed and use of profanity will disqualify an entry. If you have to ask yourself if a word is considered profane, you should find another word to replace it with.

Judges: “Scoring” judges have been carefully selected. Each judge is a professional writer, librarian or teacher (active or retired). They will score the finalist that make it past the “screening” judge's initial reads.
We are interested in getting more “screening” judges. Although you do not have to be as qualified as a “scoring” judge we will only accept those qualified to judge writing entries. If feel you would qualify and do not plan to enter the contest, send an email to: inquiry@patriciasherman.org with "Writing Contest Screening Judge" in the subject line.

Announcement of Winners: We will announce the winners in an email sent to all entrants on or before 31Mar11. Soon after that, they will be posted at www.patriciasherman.org.

Distribution of Prizes: An Award Ceremony at the Robert J. Parks Library in Oscoda will be held on Thursday April 14, 2011 at 6:00pm. The winners will be required to read their winning entries or allow the entry to be read by someone else. Prizes will be awarded during the ceremony. The evening will be taped and may be shown locally on Channel 3, or another local access channel. Cash prizes will be in the form of a check or money order made out to the winner. Any prizes not collected at the Award Ceremony will be held at the Robert J. Parks Library until 1Jun11. Prizes that are not collected by 1Jun11 will be forfeited and used as prizes in the 2012 contest. If there fails to be a contest in 2012, all prizes will be donated to the Oscoda Friends of the Library or other charitable group. Check and books may be mailed to contestants who have moved out of state and will not be returning. Checks will be sent via first class mail, and books via media mail. The contest will not be responsible for lost mail. Any other items in the gift baskets will be forfeited if check and books are mailed.

Use of Winning Materials: By entering your work to the Patricia Sherman Memorial Writing Contest you are authorizing the contest to use any prize-winning material in a limited scope to promote the event and announce the winners. The use of prize-winning material will include, but not be limited to: winning entries read aloud at the Award Ceremony, the video of the Award Ceremony may be shown on local television, the video may also be available for download from www.patriciasherman.org, videos of the Award Ceremony may be made available to sell to the public by the videographer, winning entries may be published in local newspapers or on www.patriciasherman.org and winning entries may be published by the school an entrant attends or by our sponsors.

Copyright: The author of each entry retains copyright of their entry and allows the use of their entry as mentioned above for no more than fifteen months from the announcement of the winners. The contest will take care to be sure all entries will be handled with can, but cannot be responsible for parallel thinking (more than one person coming up with an identical idea) or the unauthorized use of the materials outside the scope of this contest. If your work wins, it will receive exposure to the public and the contest cannot be responsible for what the public does with it. This is a sad reality in any form of publishing. If you have questions about how to protect your work with a copyright visit: http://www.copyright.gov/

Judging Criteria: When your entry is sent to a judge a number will identify it and your name will not be made available to them. Each entry will be sent initially to two screening judges. They will decide if the entry stops there, or goes to a final round where it is scored by the four scoring judges. If there is a disagreement between the two screening judges it will be sent to a third to break the tie.

Scoring judges will grade each entry with a score of 1 to 5, in five areas. The areas the judges will be asked to score the entries on are: originality, the author's voice, format, grammar/spelling/punctuation and creativity. Please note that the judges will take into account that format, grammar and punctuation will all be affected by the type of written expression it is (a short story will have a different format than a play). No scores or comments will be shared with the author. No list of finalists will be announced – only the winner’s list.

Judge's Decision: The judging of written expressions is subjective. The judges will do their best to judge each entry on its merits. Judges will be given the chance to write in comments to the author - but it is not required. No scores or comments will be returned to the contestants unless the judge requests specific comments be passed on to the author. The judges' decisions are final.

Looking Ahead: Feel free to contact us if you would like to be a “screening” judge this year or in future competitions or if you wish to sponsor the contest: inquiry@patriciasherman.org

More information/ entry form here.