Contests

Twitter Memoir Contest

Twitter Memoir Contest

This contest closed in April 2015. See below for the list of biweekly winners, or click here to see the announcement page for the two grand-prize winners.

If a Roman general can sum up a moment in his story (the conquest of Zela) in 22 characters, then so can you!

Between January 9 and April 24, 2015, The Malahat Review, the Creative Nonfiction Collective Society, and the Greater Victoria Public Library are joining forces to launch the Twitter Memoir Contest. Capture a fleeting moment in your life—comic or disturbing, bathetic or inspiring—in 140 characters or less, then tweet it to #140memoir. Note: that’s a zero in “140,” not a letter O.

The scribes of the best Twitter Memoirs will win books (titles available here) by emerging and established creative nonfiction writers from across Canada—all donated by the authors or their publishers.

Enter as often as you like—and retweet, favourite, mention, and of course, pour your heart out most succinctly! A pithy winner will be chosen every two weeks.

The biweekly winners:

January 23 - Laura Fee, who selected Born Out Of This by Christine Lowther (Caitlin Press) and I Wasn’t Always Like This (2014) by Shelley A. Leedahl (Signature Editions).

February 6 - Gillian Cornwall, who selected Coming Ashore: A Memoir by Catherine Gildiner (ECW Press) and They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School by Bev Sellars (Signature Editions).

February 20 - Katherine Krige, who selected Around the World on Minimum Wage: An Account of a Pilgrimage I Once Made to Tibet by Mistake by Andrew Struthers (New Star Books) and Into the Mystic: My Years With Olga by Susan McCaslin (Innana Publications).

March 6 - Roz Nay, who selected The Inspection House: An Impertinent Field Guide to Modern Surveillance (Coach House Books) and Davy the Punk (Porcupine’s Quill).

March 20 - Barbara Chambers, who selected Far and Near (ECW Press) and Becoming Intimate with the Earth (Pauline Le Bel).

April 3 - Ross McKie, who selected Curationism: How Curating Took Over The Art World and Everything Else (Coach House Books) and Chamber Music: The Poetry of Jan Zwicky (Wilfrid Laurier University Press).

April 17 - Amy Roher Antonini, who selected Brazilian Journal (Porcupine’s Quill) and The Mystery Shopping Cart: Essays on Poetry and Culture (Palimpsest Press).

The winner for each entry period—selected by an exacting panel of experts—will be announced on Twitter, Facebook, and the Malahat’s and the CNFC’s websites one week after each deadline’s passed.

And to add to the excitement, not once but twice, a grand prize will be awarded, one to coincide with WordsThaw 2015 (March 20–22), the Malahat’s annual literary symposium, and another during the CNFC’s 11th-annual conference from April 24 to 26 at the Inn at Laurel Point in downtown Victoria. The grand-prize-winning Twitter Memoirs were chosen from the biweekly winners.

Click here for the grand prize winners announcement page.

If Caesar would have had a Twitter handle, who knows how far his campaign to make enemies and influence the conquered might have gone?

Find out more about WordsThaw 2015 and the CNFC conference.

The Twitter memoir contest is co-sponsored by:

The Malahat Review

CNFC

GVPL