"Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels."
This year's award goes to Garrison Spik of Washington, DC:
"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."
On the chance that you'd like try your own hand at bad fiction writing next year, visit the website for contest rules, a history of the contest, a full reading of the quote by
Bulwer-Lytton that inspired the contest (it wasn't
really Charles Schultz' Snoopy) and years worth of bad writing awards. I might submit something myself; as a teenaged poet I once likened 'love' to the game of Parcheesi and have never lived that down.
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