The Fiction Fantastic awards ceremony on June 9 celebrates the winners and debuts the 2023 anthology: Enter the Imaginarium
Fiction Fantastic empowers young writers to be bold, imaginative, and brave. It gives them a chance to share their best fiction stories and compete with other young writers for the opportunity to be publicly recognized for their work.
Fiction Fantastic, now in its 10th year, is a program of Wordcrafters in Eugene, a local literary arts nonprofit organization. To date, 141 stories by young area authors have been published in annual anthologies, with another 17 debuting in this year’s professionally-published anthology, Enter the Imaginarium, available June 9.
More than 140 students in grades K-12 entered the contest this year, with short stories connected to the theme: Enter the Imaginarium. In total, they submitted 203,447 words.
Over the past decade, volunteer judges have read and scored more than 1,000 story submissions, averaging about 130 entries each year.
Oregon-based author Rosiee Thor judged the top-scoring entries in each category for the 2023 contest, choosing the final winners.
“I really enjoyed reading the stories. It brought me back to my own experiences of youthful creativity. There’s a joy in the kids’ stories that’s just infectious,” Thor says. “There are a few I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.”
Thor, author of the young adult novels Tarnished Are The Stars, Fire Becomes Her, The Meaning of Pride, and Life is Strange: Steph’s Story, is the keynote speaker for the Fiction Fantastic awards ceremony, 6-8 pm on Friday, June 9. Their keynote, “Stories are Magic” will share their experiences on the process of writing with joy.
The awards ceremony, held at the Downtown Eugene Public Library, is free and open to the public. It will also be livestreamed on the library’s YouTube channel.