Mediabistro's book blog, GalleyCat, has commenced its World's Longest Literary Remix contest, which invites a preregistered group of writers to recompose one page each of a work by nineteenth-century novelist Horatio Alger, famous for his copious rags-to-riches narratives. For interested parties who aren't on the roster to submit rewrites of Alger's "badly-written, meandering, and oversimplified public domain parable" Joe's Luck, or Always Wide Awake, GalleyCat is still taking names for a waiting list via e-mail.
The rewritten pages, from which three winning entries will be randomly selected, are due on June 7. Prizes include printed copies of the remixed novel, courtesy of Scribd and Blurb; a selection of books from Quirk Books, publishers of twisted literary titles such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Android Karenina; and the first four issues of Electric Literature, a quarterly online and POD journal. The digital book version of the Joe's Luck remix will be available to the public for free.
GalleyCat has plans to run similar contests in the future with other public domain books—and the waitlisted writers from this first contest will be among the first to be invited in the next round. More information is posted on GalleyCat.