PRADA international short story competition

Prada – the high fashion luxury brand based in Milan – is running an international short story contest with Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore.

The theme is wide: “views of the world. Images, marks, ideas,” and seems to be inspired, at least in part, by their range of sunglasses (check out minimal baroque…quite extraordinary twirly bits at the side) and they ask writers to consider this question:

“What are the realities that our eyes give back to us? And how are these realities filtered through lenses?”

Hmm, not like any other writing competition I’ve come across and they are picky about about what you submit and how it looks on the page. Oh hell, it’s Prada so I suppose it’s not that surprising.  Stories need to be roughly 4,000 – 8,000 words, although  they’d prefer “a minimum of 10 (ten) pages and a maximum of 20 (twenty) pages on A4 sized sheets, each page to contain approximately 400 words, written in Bodoni -DTC dim. 11 style.”

Read everything about the competition HERE and read it carefully. You are going to have work hard figuring out what they are hoping too see. The prize is €5,000 prize and the winning story will be published in an e-book, the print version will be distributed in Prada boutiques. (Pause as I imagine the readership….) and you can write it in ANY language, a truly international competition. I know they teach Cornish at City Lit…wonder if any of the students would consider entering. It seems to be a golden opportunity for minority languages…

Deadline is  June 18. Winners will be announced on December 31, 2013 and you can send entries to pradajournal@prada.com.

photo credit: [martin] via photopin cc model not wearing Prada (I presume) actually they don’t want graphic sex and aren’t keen on drugs and violence so this picture is no help at all (apart from the glasses). Forget about it. Think Prada