Deadline to submit an entry to the Okanagan Short Story Contest is February 7, with the final winners announced in March. Photo by Timothy L Brock on Unsplash.
It’s time for local emerging writers to put their thinking caps on as the annual Okanagan Short Story Contest is open for submissions.
Now running for 27 years—the Short Story Contest was initiated in 1997 by UBC Okanagan Creative Writing Instructor Nancy Holmes along with local author John Lent—applications are open until early February.
“The annual short story contest has a long tradition of introducing emerging writers to the Okanagan community,” says UBCO Creative Writing Lecturer and UBCO alumnus Umar Turaki.
Winners in previous years have gone on to publish with Penguin Random House, Arsenal Pulp Press and NeWest Press, as well as numerous national and international magazines and journals.
“The history of the Okanagan Short Story Contest is long and its influence is significant,” says Turaki. “What a privilege to play a small part in its unfolding story as the annual contest continues to discover and celebrate local voices across BC’s interior.”
Emerging writers are invited to submit their work for the chance to win several prizes, including $1,000 for the winner, while second and third prizes are $400 and $200 respectively. This is the sixth year in a row the contest has been open to high school students and the top prize for that category is $200.
This year, the contest comes full circle as submitted entries will be adjudicated by faculty from UBCO’s creative writing program including Holmes who is now an Emeritus Professor.
“Being the judge for a creative contest I’ve helped organize for so many years is very special to me,” she says. “John Lent and I started the contest to showcase Okanagan and interior BC talent—we knew it was out there and history has proven us right.”
Holmes has published six collections of poetry, most recently Arborophobia. She is the editor of Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems. With fellow UBCO instructor Denise Kenney, she established the Eco Art Incubator, an initiative which supports ecological art in the Okanagan Valley. Holmes also established, with Dr. Cameron Cartiere, the award-winning community-based art project about native pollinators called Border Free Bees.
She retired from teaching this past spring. She is the recipient of the 2015 Robert Kroetsch National Teaching Award in Creative Writing for her innovative student project, Dig Your Neighbourhood, and The Malahat Review’s Constance Rooke Creative Non-Fiction award in 2017.
Entries for the Okanagan Short Story Contest are open to fiction writers in the southern interior of British Columbia—east of Hope, west of the Alberta border, north of the border to the United States and south of Williams Lake. All original entries must be between 1,000 and 4,000 words and writers are welcome to submit as many entries as they choose. There is a $20 entry fee for each story, but no charge for students in the high school category. Entries must be received by 11:59 pm on February 7, 2025.
“The remarkable stories that have won this contest have wowed me for years,” adds Dr. Holmes. “It will be a treat to be on the other end of the team—getting to read the cream of the crop and agonizing over who should win the big prize. I look forward to reading them all and I must admit, I feel a bit daunted. There are so many great writers and fabulous stories out there.”
All proceeds from the competition go towards Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies creative writing scholarships at UBC Okanagan, and towards supporting Indspire, an Indigenous organization that invests in the education of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people.
Winners of the short story contest will be announced in March at a public event where the finalists will be invited to read from their work. For a full list of contest details and rules, visit: fccs.ok.ubc.ca/short-story.
