Fall into Fiction Short Story Contest

Enter your Short Story to the Fall into Fiction Contest!

Fall is here again! To celebrate, San Jose Public Library is hosting a short fiction writing contest for the month of September. The contest is open to writers of all ages and in any style. Entries will be published on our Short Edition Portal and Short Story dispensers and prizes will be award to for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners in each age category.

How to Enter

Step 1: Complete the online registration form for Fall into Fiction 2022 by September 30 at 11:59pm.

Step 2: Submit Online, via Short Edition Portal or by email (shortstories@sjlibrary.org), by September 30, 2022 at 11:59pm.

Writing Guidelines

• Works must be previously unpublished in print and online, including on personal blogs.
• Story may not exceed 4500 characters, including spaces and punctuation.
• Story must be for general audiences. We will not accept entries with explicit or mature content.
• Only one submission per person.
• All submissions must be proofread for spelling and grammatical errors.

Please review our full list of Submission Guidelines for more details.

Age Groups and Prizes

• Children (0-7): Prizes awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners.
• Children (8-9): Prizes awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners.
• Pre-Teens (10-12): Prizes awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners.
• Teens (13-17): Prizes awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners.
• Adults (18+): Prizes awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners.

All winners and other selected works will be published on SJPL Short Edition online platform and in the Short Edition Dispenser at select locations.

Judging

Library staff and volunteers will oversee the judging process. To understand what the judges will be looking for, you can view the detailed judging rubric. Winners will be announced in mid-October.

(Virtual) Short Story Writing and Publishing For Teens

Friday September 16, 2022, 4:00 - 5:00 PM

Join us for a one hour program where attendees will learn about the library's publishing platform Short Editions. We will be writing introductory paragraphs to get us started creating our first 1 minute, 3 minute, or 5 minute stories, which will be made available to the community through the library.

This program is perfect for any aspiring writers and also to any teen interested in earning volunteer service hours working as a Teen Short Editions contributor. Join the program to find out more.

Author's Corner

Last Friday of each Month, 5:00 - 6:00 PM

For teens hoping to hone their creative writing skills, stop by Author's Corner!

Author’s Corner is a monthly, informal creative writing club to help support Short Edition Authors, teens considering a career as an author looking to get practice and feedback on their work, teens looking to create works to help build portfolios and samples for creative writing programs, or any teen that is working on a piece of creative writing/wanting to practice their creative writing skill. It will also provide an opportunity for teens to practice 21st century skills of creativity, communication, collaboration, initiative, productivity, and social skills. Each session will feature new writing prompts (that we hope will inspire bigger stories or cure writer's block!), time to practice writing, an opportunity to share and discuss our writing with peers, open forum to swap writing tips and tricks, as well as short lesson each session focusing on a different facet of creative writing.

Spring into Poetry Contest Submissions are on Biblioboard!

You can now see the winning entries from SJPL's Spring into Poetry Contest 2022 on Biblioboard! Discover the amazing creativity of our community.