Genre: Fiction

A form that requires remarkable economy of narrative is tightening its belt even further in Electric Literature's holiday short short story contest.

The literary magazine is asking writers to "show a little restraint," telling a story in thirty to three hundred words and using each of those words only once.

There is no fee to enter the competition, and, while there's no cash prize, either, the three top stories will be published on the Outlet, Electric Literature's blog. The top winner will also receive a print edition of Electric Literature Volume 1 (six issues) and the book Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! (Soft Skull Press, 2011) by contest judge Mike Edison, arguably an expert on the opposite of restraint.

The first runner-up wins a digital edition of Electric Literature Volume 1, and the third-place prize comes courtesy of a master of literary constrictions, the Oulipo's Raymond Queneau—the second runner-up will receive Queneau's Exercises in Style, an illustrated short short story collection and field guide to Oulipean language play.

Story entries, which should be submitted via e-mail, are due to Electric Literature on December 31. For the "nit-picky" rules concerning duplicate usage of possessives, plurals, etcetera, visit the Outlet's fine print page.

Write a story that opens with your main character doing something that is completely antithetical to his or her personality. Let the story be about how this character came to do what he or she did.

Once again in 2012 Amazon will partner with Penguin Group to hold a contest for early-career novelists.

The two media giants announced last week that the fifth annual Breakthrough Novel Award competition, which offers an advance of fifteen thousand dollars and a publication contract with Penguin, will open on January 23 and close to entries on February 5—or once five thousand entries have been submitted in the general fiction category (a young adult competition is being offered as well).

The assessment process for the contest is five-tiered. First, Amazon editors will select one thousand manuscripts from the total pool, and, with the assistance of seasoned Amazon reviewers, will whittle that group down to two hundred fifty. Those that make the cut will be reviewed and rated by Publishers Weekly reviewers, and the most favored fifty will be handed off to editors at Penguin, who will select three finalists.

The shortlisted writers will have their manuscripts reviewed by a panel that includes editor Anne Sowards, literary agent Donald Maass, and thriller author Linda Fairstein, and Amazon users will then be able to vote for a winner based on the reviews and manuscript excerpts. Amazon will reveal the winner on June 16.

For contest guidelines and the fine print, visit the Amazon website.

The Center for Fiction in New York City has announced the winner of the 2011 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, formerly the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize.

The ten-thousand-dollar award went to Colorado author Bonnie Nadzam for Lamb (Other Press).

The story of a middle-aged man who develops a friendship with, in the words of the author, a "poor and rather dull eleven-year-old girl" and embarks on a road trip with her, Nadzam's novel has drawn comparisons to Nabokov's classic, and controversial, story of intergenerational relations. But, "while kneejerk comparisons to Lolita are inevitable," says Drew Toal of the Daily Beast, which counted Lamb among its "Great Weekend Reads" earlier this fall, "David Lamb is playing a different game than Humbert Humbert.”

Nadzam's novel won out over debuts by finalists David Bezmozgis for The Free World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Sarah Braunstein for The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (Norton), Carolyn Cooke for Daughters of the Revolution (Knopf), Ida Hattemer-Higgins for The History of History (Knopf), Shards by Ismet Prcic (Black Cat), and Touch by Alexi Zentner (Norton). Each of the authors shortlisted received an award of one thousand dollars.

At the award ceremony on Tuesday, the Center for Fiction also awarded Scribner editor in chief Nan Graham the Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction.