We are happy to announce that we are partnering with writer Samrat Upadhyay to organize the second edition of Writing Nepal: A Short Story Contest. The contest has been set up to encourage new writing in English from Nepal. The deadline for all submissions is 30 June 2015. Samrat Upadhyay will be the sole judge of the contest, and will honour the winners at an award ceremony to be held in Kathmandu on 3 August 2015. All submissions will be considered for publication in La.Lit.

Submission guidelines:

– Only one submission per participant is allowed.
– Submissions must be unpublished.
– Submissions should be between 1000 to 4000 words.
– All submissions should be in .rtf, .doc, .docx or .odt format and should be typed and double-spaced.
– Include a separate cover sheet file with your name and contact information. Your name must not appear in the file with the submission, as all submissions will be judged blind.
– Participation is limited to writers of Nepali origin.
– All 2013 Writing Nepal participants, with the exception of the 1st place winner, are eligible for the 2015 contest.
– All submissions should be sent to editor@lalitmag.com.

Deadline: July 15, 2015

Prizes:

– First Prize: Rs. 10,000
– Second Prize: Rs. 5,000
– Third Prize: Rs. 2,500

Writing Nepal: A Short Story Contest aims to encourage Nepali talent, home and abroad. The contest is part a project supervised by Samrat Upadhyay at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Select MFA students travel to Nepal and participate in cultural tours and a variety of literary activities: conducting workshops for students, visiting schools, and serving on literary panels and giving readings. The trip aims to help the students engage with a broader social and political sphere.

La.Lit (www.lalitmag.com) is a literary magazine that celebrates the beauty of writing. It features original and translated fiction, non-fiction, and poetry; photography and graphic art; and exclusive interviews and news from the world of literature. We aim to bring contemporary achievements in world literature to Nepal and, equally, take Nepali and South Asian literature to the world.

Samrat Upadhyay is the first Nepali-born fiction writer to be published in the United States. His debut short story collection Arresting God in Kathmandu was the winner of the 2001 Whiting Writers’ Award and his second short story collection, The Royal Ghosts, won the 2007 Asian American Literary Award. His first novel, The Guru of Love, was a New York Times Notable Book while his second novel, Buddha’s Orphans, was longlisted for the 2012 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. His 2014 novel, The City Son, has been longlisted for PEN Open Book award. He is the Martha C. Kraft Professor of Humanities at Indiana University, where he teaches in its MFA program (http://iub.edu/~mfawrite/about/).