The Virgins Flash Fiction Contest
The Tales Pensieve has always been about TALES.
It does not matter where the tales are from, who talks about them, what they talk about or what age they talk from – what matters is that they talk and we hear.
And now we want to hear the tales that whisper to you, the tales that you want to whisper out and express. Fiction that happens to you in a flash. Bring that fiction out in a flash. Here is our bit to bring it out…
The Tales Pensieve & Fingerprint Publishers Present:
THE VIRGINS FLASH FICTION CONTEST
The ritual is simple. Read the rules listed below. Write a story adhering to those rules. Upload the story using the form below. Go have coffee, read a book, twiddle your thumbs or go on vacation till you get a winner announcement eMail from us.
The Rules:
1. Theme: Make a city human-i-fied
Everyone’s got a favorite city. Talk about it or make it talk. Word-paint your favorite city as a human – man, woman or child – just like the judge, author Siddharth Tripathi does in his book The Virgins. You can take a clue from these line in The Virgins:
“If the city of Banaras were a man, he would be a primitive saint with a penchant for debauchery, the kind of man who would derive as much peace and joy from meditating and standing on one leg in the middle of a freezing river as he would in cracking bawdy jokes in a whorehouse while injecting himself with a cocktail of drugs. He’d be a man who bathes in the Ganges to wash away his sins and then sins by defecating in the same holy river, forming an endless cycle of sin and redemption; a man who would cover his body with ash from a burnt corpse; a man whose idea of makeup would be dabbing cow dung and drain water on his cheeks and sandalwood paste and red tilak on his forehead; a man whose house would be teeming with middle-aged, white-sari-clad widows, eccentric, old bachelors in tattered half sweaters, naked tantriks drinking liquor from skulls and dancing merrily around burning bodies, and other such strange seekers anxiously searching the narrow lanes of his sprawling, gothic mansion for death, life, religion, enlightenment, redemption, or a child to screw“
2. The contest will start on 01.07.2013 and run through 31.07.2013 till 11:45 p.m.
3. The contest is open to all residents in India over the age of 11.
4. Only entries in English will be considered eligible for the contest.
5. Only submissions in .doc, .docx & PDF formats will be eligible for the contest.
6. Word limit: minimum 100 and maximum 1000 words.
7. The submission adjudged the best will receive a gift voucher, redeemable at Uread.com, worth Rs. 1000/- from Fingerprint! Publishers.
8. All the submissions will be judged by Siddharth Tripathi, author of The Virgins and his decision will be final and acceptable in full.
9. Submitted entries should be your original work of fiction and should not have been published in any format, on any platform including personal blogs.
10. The copyright of the submitted fiction stays with the writer. The submission is only for the purpose of this contest & The Tales Pensieve will not publish the story fully or partially in any format.
11. Only one entry per person is allowed.
12. Please do not eMail your story. Only submissions received through the form below will be eligible for the contest.
13. By submitting your story for the contest you hereby agree to all the above stated rules, that govern The Virgins Flash Fiction contest.
14. If you have any queries concerning the contest, do not hesitate to write to: Please use #TVFFC in the subject line.
Why paint a city?
Because it is The Virgins Flash Fiction Contest. The Virgins is a funny, action packed and tragi-comic coming-of-age story about three friends who live in Varanasi. It is also set against the strong backdrop of Uttar Pradesh’s student mafia and protection racket. More on the book:
Like the author word-painted Varanasi why not we all word-paint our favorite cities.eh?
The Judge: Siddharth Tripathi
Siddharth Tripathi was born in Allahabad and schooled in Banaras. He is a B.E from NIT Trichy and an MBA from MDI, Gurgaon. Siddharth currently lives in Gurgaon and works as a consultant for a business advisory firm. He also writes a blog on music and films.
The Virgins is his debut novel.
The Patrons: FiNGERPRINT!
Fingerprint is India’s youngest independent publisher of commercial fiction and non-fiction paperbacks and e-books. It is part of the publishing cell of Prakash Books, which has published some of India’s finest coffee table books over the past few years. Fingerprint drives this cell’s foray into commercial paperbacks and e-books at affordable prices for readers.
Now write that Fiction in a Flash and come back here
