The 2008 Gertrude Johnson Williams Competition in Short Fiction

2008-10-01

 
Johnson Publishing Chairman and CEO Linda Johnson Rice and EbonyJet.com are proud to sponsor the 14th Gertrude Johnson Williams Competition in Short Story Fiction.

Since its launch, the competition has awarded more than $100,000 in total prizes to America's most gifted new writers in the short fiction genre.

This year's competition will be judged by some of the nation's most talented and well known authors - Walter Mosely, Benilde Little, dream hampton, Trey Ellis and Sandra Jackson-Opoku.

Along with a $5000 cash prize, the winner will have his or her story published in a special fiction section of EbonyJet.com.

Dust off your keyboard and bring your ideas to life. We look forward to your entry.

ENTER NOW! 

CONTEST JUDGES

Walter E. Mosley
Walter Mosley is the author of 29 critically acclaimed books, most notably his Easy Rawlins mystery series. A champion of developing voices from outside the mainstream, Rawlins took the unprecedented step of placing the Easy Rawlins prequel, Gone Fishin' with Black Classic Press, a small black publishing house in Baltimore because he felt it was important to create a model to show "that it's possible to publish a book successfully outside mainstream publishing in New York."

Mosley's short fiction has appeared in GQ, Esquire, Los Angeles Times Magazine and Savoy. In 2003, Mosley was the guest editor for The Best American Short Stories, and he has served on the board of directors of the National Book Awards. His work has been translated into 21 different languages.

dream hampton
In 1990 dream hampton became the first woman on staff at The Source Magazine, the so-called hip-hop bible. There she penned essays on misogyny and police brutality, and early profiles on Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur. Her essays have appeared in numerous anthologies including Rock She Wrote, And It Don't Stop: The Best American Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years, and The Vibe History of Hip Hop. Her work has appeared in Vibe, Spin, The Village Voice, The Detroit News, Essence, Parenting and Harper's Bazaar.

Sandra Jackson-Opoku
In the course of completing her undergraduate work, Jackson-Opoku studied under two people she cites as literary influences: Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe and Caribbean writer Michael Thelwell. Her broad perspective has been an integral part of her work as an author since her very first novel, The River Where Blood Is Born, a book that started as a travelogue from journals written as an exchange student in Nigeria in the mid-70s. She has received several honors and awards, for her poetry, short stories and non-fiction including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and two Gwendolyn Brooks Poet Laureate Awards.

Trey Ellis
An American Book Award-winning novelist, Emmy-nominated screenwriter and cultural critic, Trey Ellis' first two novels, Platitudes and Home Repairs were critically acclaimed, and his latest novel, Right Here, Right Now was named a notable book of the year by The Washington Post. Ellis was a featured subject in the coffee-table book, Why We Write: Personal Statements and Photographic Portraits of 25 Top Screenwriters, and his screenplay for the HBO film, "The Tuskeegee Airmen" earned him an Emmy nomination. Ellis has taught advanced fiction through UCLA's writing program, and judged the 2004 New School University Chapbook competition. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Playboy, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. His most recent book is Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single-Fatherhood.

Benilde Little
Benilde Little began her writing career at The Cleveland Plain Dealer, quickly followed by stints at the Newark Star-Ledger, five years on staff at People magazine and as entertainment editor at Essence. Raised in a modest, integrated neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, and later attending Howard University, Little mined her experiences with class and social strata within the African American community in her critically acclaimed novels, Good Hair, The Itch and Acting Out. Little¹s fourth novel, "Who Does She Think She Is?" was published by Simon and Schuster in 2005.