TWAIN WRITING CONTEST EXTENDS DEADLINE
Students Requests Spark Extension
Buffalo, NY -- The Buffalo and Erie County Public Library (B&ECPL) has extended the deadline for its Mark Twain Writing Competition to June 25th, 2001. The Library launched the international competition on March 1, 2001, challenging writers ages 14 and older to create an ending for Twain’s unpublished short story, "A Murder, a Mystery and a Marriage." Numerous requests from entrants, especially in the young writers category, were key to the decision, according to library officials.
"With prize money that could equal earnings from a summer job, we have had many requests from both high school and college students to extend our June 1st deadline," noted B&ECPL Director Diane J. Chrisman. "The Library is sensitive to the fact that spring is a particularly busy time for students of all ages and hopes the extension will spur additional student participation," she added.
Cash prizes of $5,000 for first place, $3,000 for second place and $1,000 for third place will be awarded in the international category (14 and older). The competition for young writers (14 to 18) will award prizes in the amount of $1,000 for first place, $500 for second place and $250 for third place, with both local (Erie County) and international divisions. The winners will be announced in October 2001. All winners will be considered for commercial publication to be determined.
The competition stems from an idea Twain proposed to his good friend and editor of The Atlantic Monthly, William Dean Howells, back in 1876. Twain suggested that his contemporaries create their own versions of a story he’d proposed in outline form. The Atlantic was to publish the renditions, but for reasons unknown, the idea never materialized and Twain’s version was not published commercially.
The Library has posted the first two chapters of the story on its web site, www.buffalolib.org. The web site also contains complete details of the competition, information about the B&ECPL’s extensive collection of Twain information and memorabilia, and links to other Twain-related Web sites.
After an initial screening of entries by the State University of New York at Buffalo, adult finalists will have their work judged by accomplished authors and scholars. They include novelists and area natives Joyce Carol Oates, Lauren Belfer and Connie Porter; humorist and Atlantic contributor Roy Blount, documentary filmmaker Dayton Duncan, scholars Robert Hirst of the Mark Twain Project and honorary panelist Leslie Fiedler of the State University of New York at Buffalo.
The Atlantic Monthly will publish Twain’s complete version of "A Murder, a Mystery and a Marriage" in its July issue. W.W. Norton and Co. of New York has purchased the rights to publish the story in a hardcover, gift edition in the fall of 2001. Audio, film and e-book projects are currently being explored.
The B&ECPL has a long history with Twain’s writings and is home to the original handwritten manuscript of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain, who lived in Buffalo and served as editor of The Buffalo Express newspaper from 1869 - 1871, contributed part of the manuscript to the founders of the Library back in 1885, thinking half had been destroyed. It wasn’t until 1992 that the entire work was reunited after being discovered in a California attic.
A CD-ROM is being developed which will publish the original Huck Finn manuscript along with cultural and historical references, photographs, video and audio clips pertaining to the work, as well as scholarly and literary criticism. Winners of the Writing Competition will be published on this groundbreaking multimedia edition.
For further information, visit the Library’s Web site at www.buffalolib.org or call (716) 858-7181.