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This Year's Winners | 55 Fiction: The Book | How to Enter
55 fiction

FYI: 55 FICTION NEWS FLASH: Our second book, "The World’s Shortest Stories of Love & Death," has been translated into Japanese.

We like short shorts

Check out the winning entries in our 16th annual 55 Fiction contest

Sixteen years ago, we invented an odd little short story genre and called it 55 Fiction. It was simple. You had to write a story. You could only use 55 words. We knew you could do it. We were right.

With this, our 16th annual 55 Fiction contest, we present the winning stories for 2002, chosen from thousands of tiny tales that poured in this year from as far off as Portugal, Malaysia, Japan, and even Iran.

We’re continually amazed how writers keep mining the genre, each year coming up with new literary nuggets–quirky plots, unusual twists, and telling takes on the human condition, stories of murder most fierce and love unrequited, creatures of darkness, hearts in transition, inner demons, outer limits, distant laughter, plus plenty of hot tears, cold steel, and a body or two.

Fifty-Five Fiction stories distill the world and all its grand absurdity into 55-word literary treats that deliver suspense, wisdom, humor, and horror with astonishing economy.

Both New Times and the Sun invited stories from readers, which brought work from even more Central Coast writers. And they did a pretty good job of taking on the world–half this year’s winners are from the Central Coast, even though they made up less than 25 percent of entries.

But that’s not surprising. After all, they have the advantage of living right here where 55 Fiction was born, although being pretty good writers probably had something to do with it, too.

Our thanks to everyone who entered. And our congratulations to all our winners.




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