The Little Tokyo Historical Society (LTHS) seeks fictional short stories for its third annual Imagine Little Tokyo short story contest in the categories of English language, Japanese language and youth (18 and younger). The deadline is January 31, 2016.

The purpose of the contest is to raise awareness of Little Tokyo through a creative story that takes place in Little Tokyo. The story has to be fictional and set in a current, past or future Little Tokyo in the City of Los Angeles, California. Each category winner will be awarded $500 in cash with their short story being published in The Rafu Shimpo and Discover Nikkei website. A public award ceremony and dramatic readings of the winning stories are also being planned for spring 2016.

“Including the Japanese and youth categories last year enhanced our contest,” said Bill Watanabe, head of the Imagine Little Tokyo committee. “It was exciting to receive submissions from around the state and globe and we hope to receive even more next year.”

            For more information and guidelines, refer to the Little Tokyo Historical Society website, http://www.littletokyohs.org . If you would like to financially contribute to the contest, e-mail littletokyohs@gmail.com

 
Guidelines

• The story must be original, fictional, written in either Japanese or English by the submitting author and never been published (even online).
• The same story submitted in a previous year cannot be resubmitted.
• The setting of the story should be in Little Tokyo – either past, present or future.
• Submitted manuscript should be 2,500 words or less for English or 5,000 ji or less for Japanese and have a title.
• File should be a Microsoft Word doc, docx or rtf.
• Please use 12 point font, preferably Times Roman or Courier type.
• Please remove any mention of your name from your short story, including headers.
• The short story manuscript must be submitted digitally as an e-mail attachment to littletokyohs@gmail.com (include SHORT STORY  in the subject line). In the e-mail message, please include your name, phone number and age if 18 or under.
• The submissions should include a signed agreement, which can be found on the Little Tokyo Historical Society website http://www.littletokyohs.org . The agreement can be either e-mailed or sent via post.
• Submissions need to be e-mailed by January 31, 2016, 12 midnight PST. NO EXCEPTIONS.
• Immediate family members of judges (first-round or final) are ineligible.