New York writers, win a chance to read your work alongside Sam Lipsyte at our NYC event on April 6. Lipsyte is one of our featured guests at A Night Together, an event The Rumpus is co-hosting with Tin House and Flavorpill, which will also feature, among others, Michael Showalter, Lorelei Lee, Dave Hill, Colson Whitehead, Alina Simone and Jeffrey Lewis.
In honor of Sam Lipsyte, and in an effort to bring some new writers into the mix, we’re offering four writers an opportunity to read your work on stage along with Sam Lipsyte, Colson Whitehead and Lorelei Lee. We ask only that you spin your short fictional prose piece from one line of Lipsyte’s new novel The Ask.
Select one sentence or sentence fragment from The Ask–we’ve provided some below for your convenience, but you may choose one of your own from the novel–and use it as a jump-off point for your own fictional prose piece. The sentence or sentence fragment may be placed anywhere in your piece. Entries should be 300 words or less. Four pieces will be selected to be read by the authors onstage at the Highline Ballroom. The winners will be announced on the eve of the event.
Fees and Dates:
There is no fee to enter and no limit to the number of entries you may submit. The contest closes April 5 at 12:00 noon.
(If you’d like to buy tickets, contest entrants will get a reduced rate ($6). Just let us know if and when you enter).
Send entries and inquiries to:
[email protected]. (Please put “Jump-Off” in the subject header)
Selected Sentences from The Ask:
“There was something melon-y and inviting about Raskov’s head.”
“Odds were good I was, in the final analysis, nothing but a scat gobbler from the House of Wanker.”
“He walked into the cage, rubbed his hair dry with a dishtowel.”
“I was glad I’d remembered to shucksify my vocabulary in the company of children.”
“It’s when they stop trying to destroy you, my mother said, that you should really start to worry.”
“The children shivered in the grass, their hair and skin faintly iridescent.”
“A solitudinous roil, my bitterness.”
