Black Swan Competition

The Black Swan competition is now closed. The first prize was awarded to Steven Pirie for his story ‘Night Dreaming’ .

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In association with Black Swan we are offering an exciting creative writing competition. Write a short story based on the evocative and bizarre surroundings of Black Swan, and the best entry submitted by the closing date will win the first prize of (USD) $500, and be published in The Future Fire and in Second Life by Black Swan.

See below for entry terms and conditions.

1. Enter Second Life and visit the following SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Black Swan/245/120/39/ (map may appear blank in your browser; Second Life installation required to view content)
2. Have a good look around: this land parcel is full of sculpture, structures, events, and strange inhabitants. Breathe in the atmosphere. Be inspired. Come back as often as you like.
3. Write a short story of up to 2 000 words based in some way on what you have seen.
4. The full story must be submitted to The Future Fire fiction editor by midnight (GMT) on December 10th, 2007. Submit stories by email as a .doc or .rtf attachment. Ignore the usual submission guidelines, and please use the subject line "TFF Black Swan Competition" to help our editors distinguish these from the regular submission stream.
5. The story may be in any genre on any topic, but there must be some discernible link to The Black Swan artwork. Bear in mind also that The Future Fire tends to prefer speculative and dark stories with a social conscience that confound the reader's expectations. Quality will be the deciding factor in all judgements regarding this competition.
6. All stories will be read by a panel of editors and guest judges, and a verdict will be reached in time to publish the winning story in the December 2007 issue of The Future Fire.
7. Black Swan may chose to adopt features from the winning story for future enhancements to the Second Life exhibit. The winning story will be licensed in such a way (to be negociated) that neither the author nor Black Swan shall have exclusive rights over these ideas or be able to limit the other's use of them. All other rights will of course revert to the author upon publication and copyright of the story remains with them at all times.
8. The judges' decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

Good luck!