We are looking for short stories –up to 3,500 words– that in some way touch upon ideas around building a sustainable society. We will consider all genres – rom-com, literary fiction, science fiction, mystery, etc. – but stories must engage with the idea of sustainable practices and/or societies.

Most stories set in the future are dystopian – they have a pessimistic view of society. We will consider all stories, but we encourage you to imagine a more positive settings and practices for your stories. Do feel free to draw upon the resources in this Sustainable Societies website to write your story. Each page provides links to articles/videos that describe the ideas and also ideas for how such ideas may be integrated into stories.

The story doesn’t have to be about sustainability or climate change directly. A rom-com, for example, could be set in a society that replaces ownership with borrowing and the heroine goes to a clothes library to pick up a posh dress and borrow jewellery for her big date; or the hero in a crime drama could use a carbon credit card and hear the news in the background reporting on the wellbeing index instead of GDP; or the characters in a legal drama could live in a city where everyone has gardens on their roofs and generates energy from their own waste.

Deadline

19 April 2018, 10 pm GMT

Submission

Please submit your entry and your completed submission for as an attachment via email to greenstories@soton.ac.uk  Include your name, address, telephone number and e-mail address, and whether you are a student, in the body of the email only. Also let us know where you heard about the competition.

Prizes

We will award three prizes from the entries, as well as name two to seven runners-up, whose stories will appear in a prize anthology. First place will be awarded to the best story, and there will also be two second-place prizes: one to the best story by a student, another to an entry not by a student.

1st Prize: £ 200
2nd Prize (by a student): £ 50
2nd Prize (all eligible): £ 50

The best stories will also be published in an anthology which will be distributed across bookshops and organisations interested in sustainability.

Read more

http://www.greenstories.org.uk