Deadline: 1 January 2020
Open to: everybody
Benefits: one 1st place story receives USD 2,000; two 2nd place stories receive USD 1,000 each; three third prize stories receive USD 500 each

Description

They aspire to green cities around the globe—cities that are resilient, sustainable, livable, and just. What does this mean? They created the prize to imagine and explore visions of how people, nature, and cities might join (or not). The partners and sponsors of the Nature of Cities Prize for Urban Flash Fiction are happy to announce seven prize winners and a book, a collection of 57 stories from 23 countries, published by Publication Studio in May 2019, with an introduction by Dr. Ursula Heise, Professor of Literature at UCLA.

The theme of this year’s stories is City in a Wild Garden.

Eligibility

Write a short story (“flash fiction”, up to 750 words), set in the present or future (near or far) and inspired by the phrase “City in a wild garden”. You do not have to literally use this phrase in your story. You may interpret liberally any of the words in the phrase: city, wild, and garden. Plot elements must include cities, nature, and people. It has to be fiction (that is, a story, not an essay)—any genre, from science fiction to magical realism—and can be about anything: climate change; food security; utopias; wild nature; a love story; … anything. At TNOC, we are very interested in imagining cities in which nature and people co-exist, cities in which the relationships between the human-made and the natural are imagined differently.

Benefits

There will be, at the Judging Committee’s discretion, up to 6 money-winning stories: One 1st place story receives USD 2,000; two 2nd place stories receive USD 1,000 each; three third prize stories receive USD 500 each. A larger number of stories will be included in a book to be published (in late 2020 or early 2021) by Publication Studios.