Tele Aadsen

writer - fisherman - listener

Call­ing all of Hooked’s fishy writer friends: it’s time for 49 Writ­ers’ third annu­al “Ode to a Dead Salmon” writ­ers con­test! As are so many things Alaskan, this con­test is a bit… dif­fer­ent. They’re seek­ing your best WORST writ­ing. Here are the details, re-print­ed from their site:

“Sum­mer’s in full swing, the fish are run­ning, and you know what that means: our huge­ly pop­u­lar “Ode to a Dead Salmon” bad writ­ing con­test is back. Take a look at last year’s final­ists, sharp­en your pen­cils and fol­low that smell. We want your best worst writ­ing, sub­mit­ted to  49writingcenter@gmail.com by  July 31, 2012. This year sees the return of loy­al judges Nan­cy Lord, Bill Sher­wonit, and Ray Troll, so give ‘em your best.
The idea for the con­test came orig­i­nal­ly from our 2008 inter­view with Nan­cy Lord. When Androm­e­da asked why she did­n’t write imme­di­ate­ly about her Alaskan expe­ri­ences, Nan­cy said, “I think I was scared off, years ago, by some­thing John Haines wrote in “The Writer as Alaskan”: a kind of con­dem­na­tion that new-com­ers to Alas­ka always mined the same myths, ‘odes to dead salmon,’ and that it would take gen­er­a­tions to devel­op a wor­thy Alaskan lit­er­a­ture. I’d writ­ten a few odes to dead salmon and knew that I need­ed to get beyond the obvious.”
Since the con­test was first launched, bad writ­ing has streamed in from all over the world. We post­ed it all and let our read­ers vote. Past win­ners have gar­nered some great press, includ­ing a write-up in Alas­ka Mag­a­zine.
We want your best tongue-in-cheek “Ode to a Dead Salmon” bad Alaskan writ­ing, poet­ry or prose, fic­tion or non. We’ll pub­lish all entries at our Ode to a Dead Salmon web­page so the world can read them, and we’ll post the final­ists here at 49 Writ­ers. And yes, famed and fishy Alaskan artist Ray Troll has once again offered an auto­graphed T‑shirt of choice to our win­ner. But the main goal, of course, is to have fun.
The rules:
1.      Entries must con­form to our edi­to­r­i­al policy.
2.      We need your real name and real email address. If you want your entry to be post­ed under a pseu­do­nym or left anony­mous, make that clear in your email.
3.      No more than three entries per person.
4.      No more than 800 words per entry (short­er is just fine with us: lim­er­ick, haiku, open­ing lines).
5.      Entries must be your own orig­i­nal work.
6.      You keep the copy­right but by enter­ing you’re giv­ing us per­mis­sion to post.
7.      This is our con­test. We make the rules (that’s the beau­ty of blog­ging, folks), and the rules may change as we see fit. We’ll let you know if they do.
8.      Entries must be emailed to 49writingcenter@gmail.com by mid­night on July 31.”

Apolo­gies for the bad form and con­se­quent eye strain here, friends… We’re rush­ing to cut the lines and head out, and I can’t fig­ure out why the para­graph breaks aren’t show­ing up. Thanks for for­ward­ing this one on to any­one who might be inter­est­ed; I hope to see some famil­iar names among this year’s sub­mis­sions. Hap­py writing!