Wordstock, Portland's annual festival of writers, books, and storytelling, is pleased to announce the call for submissions for the 3rd Wordstock Short Fiction Competition.

The national contest is a ?double blind? competition. The judges, a collection of writers, academics, publishers, bookstore owners, and literary critics, will choose 10 finalists. The winner of the competition receives a first prize of $1,000 and publication in the October 2009 issue of Portland Monthly magazine. All 10 finalists' stories will be published in the Wordstock Ten, an anthology that will be available at the festival, at Portland-area bookstores, and online through the Wordstock website. Every writer who enters the competition will receive a copy of the anthology.

Submission guidelines
- All short stories must be works of fiction written in English
- Stories must be an original work and not previously published
- The entry fee is $25 per short story entry
- There are no genre restrictions
- Manuscripts are to be typed, double-spaced, on 8.5 x 11 paper
- Stories should be no less than 1,500 and no more than 4,000 words