Short story prize ready to celebrate student authors

Southern Alberta Newspapers Photo by Alejandra Pulido-Guzman. PRIZE: Scott Warris, co-owner of Analog Books, says he is excited to bring back the second annual Analog Prize competition to continue inspiring high school students to write short stories.

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
Southern Alberta Newspapers

Lethbridge’s Analog Books is bringing back their second annual Analog Prize to celebrate excellence in short story fiction writing at the high school level and submissions are now open.

The Analog Prize is a writing competition presented by Analog Books and open to students in Grade 9 to Grade 12 throughout southern Alberta and Scott Warris, co-owner of Analog Books said competitors can be part of any high school, charter school, private school or home-school across southern Alberta.

“Analog Prize is based on the University of Lethbridge’s Bridge Prize for short story writing at the university level across Canada, that was started by Terry Whitehead, so he came to us last year with the idea of creating a similar prize at the high school level,” said Warris.

He said this year the contest is bringing even bigger and better prizes than last year thanks to University of Lethbridge Chancellor Terry Whitehead, who once again stepped up to sponsor the first place prize, and the additional support from an anonymous donor.

“The contest is set to encourage writing amongst younger people to hopefully inspire them to maybe choose writing as a career path, which could be through journalism, actually authoring a book or other ways,” said Warris.

He said last year for their inaugural competition they received more than 40 entries and he is hoping to increase that number this year.

“Last year first place received $500 cash and the three runner-ups took home each a $100 Analog Books gift certificate, but this year first place will receive $750 cash and a $100 Analog Books gift certificate, while the three runner-ups will receive each $100 cash and a $100 Analog Books gift certificate,” said Warris.

Even though full details and submission instructions can be found at http://www.analogbooks.net/analog-prize Warris shared some information about the competition.

“The maximum length is 4,000 words and there is no minimum length, it can be as short as they want it to be, the cut off this year for submissions will be Feb. 28, 2024 so there’s plenty of time between now and then to start writing,” said Warris.

He added that submissions can be from previously schoolwork and do not necessarily have to be written this year. It can be a story that they have previously written as long as it has never been published or never been entered in another contest.

“In fact, a lot of the submissions we received last year had been created in English classes during their time in school and that’s fine. They might get help from their teachers or for editing or everything. No problem with that,” said Warris.

He explained each student is only allowed one submission and they can do so either by email or by stopping by the store with a printed copy.

“If it’s by e-mail, they just send it to books@analogbooks.net it should be in a PDF ideally,” said Warris.

He said after the cut-off on Feb. 28, 2025 they put together a jury, which last year consisted of seven jurors and it would probably be similar this year.

“It’s quite a cross section, last year we had a few of our staff, a couple of teachers, we had a professor and some of our customers actually had volunteered to read the stories as well,” said Warris.

He said after this the jury will select four finalists which will be announced around mid May next year, before the end of the school year.