The 2011 winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest featured wind turbines and birds. Photo courtesy of Danish Wind Industry Association.
By Sarah Kyo, Public Affairs Assistant
Wind turbines combined with “sparrow-like thoughts” won over judges of the 29th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Writing Contest.
Professor Scott Rice of SJSU’s Department of English and Comparative Literature founded this competition, which celebrates purposely bad writing. Contestants from around the world write and submit original opening lines of fictional novels.
The contest is named after Victorian author Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who began his 1830 novel “Paul Clifford” with the famous phrase, “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Sue Fondrie, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, wrote this year’s grand prize winner: “Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.”
Visit the contest’s official website to read the entries of the 2011 winners, runner-ups and “dishonorable” mentions, and to find out how to enter next year’s competition.