We’re thrilled to announce the return of Opium Magazine’s 250-Word Bookmark Contest, this time judged by the inimitable Andrew Sean Greer. This means it’s time to spin your own bookmark-length yarn (no longer than 250 words), to snare the grand prize of $1,000. Stories will be featured in Opium9, and release in Oct. 2009. Better yet, for the first time ever, now second- and third-place stories will be paid $100. More ways to win! Insanity! 

The rules? Easy. Write a story or prose poem that is 250 words or less. The winning story, along with a handful of finalists, will appear in Opium9 which will debut in October 2009. Below, read a shining example--a finalist from Opium6.

The Deadline: July 31, 2009.
The Cost: $10 for a single entry; $17.50 for two (to pay: shop.opiummagazine.com)
How to Submit: Submit your bookmark-length manuscript here: http://opiummagazine.com/submissions/ (Make sure to tag your entry “Contest.” And, please, no .wpd files!). Then head to Opium’s Store: shop.opiummagazine.com to pay via credit card or Paypal (sorry for the inconvenience, but international users must use Paypal).

The Judge: Andrew Sean Greer is the author of four books, most recently The Story of a Marriage and The Confessions of Max Tivoli. His stories have appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading and O. Henry Prize Storiy anthologies, and he lives in San Francisco and New York. He is big in Italy. 

The Reward: $1,000 for 1st Place, $100 for 2nd and 3rd Place, and publication in Opium9.
The Odds: We can’t know this until all entries are in, but we receive between 200 and 300 entries (plus, while not all are paid for, we have published at least seven contest finalists in each issue).

(Our first bookmark contest, featured in Opium6: Go Green (But Save Me First), judged by Aimee Bender, was won by Rachel Khong.) Opium6 is out of print, but to order the PDF online, go here: shop.opiummagazine.com. To order only the bookmark contest finalists, go here: shop.opiummagazine.com. 

Opium6 250-Word Bookmark Finalist

Heartless
by Matt Leibel

My heart got broken, so I built
a new one, out of rags and
twigs and fast-food straws and
empty toilet-paper rolls and red
dye number five, and I walked
around with my heart on the
outside, and all the cardiologists
were stumped, they chalked it
up to the ineffable power of the
mind, but then I fell in love again,
and she noticed my heart masking-
taped to my t-shirt pocket,
and I told her it was a makeshift
heart, so if you crush it I’ll die,
and she told me scout’s honor,
she’d never do that—but in the end
she was a serial heartbreaker, she
needed her fix, so she crushed my
stand-in heart to a powder, and I
went into cardiac arrest, and now
I’m dead, but it’s okay, because we
really don’t need to feel anything
here, we mostly spend our days
watching television, playing golf,
and eating decadent meals, and
sometimes we look down through
the Plexiglas screens on the stillliving,
so fussy and fickle with
their feelings, their delicate egos
driven by these bloody-pink balloons
of flesh and muscle, and we
want to tell them everything will
work out, but another, smaller,
part of us—the part still clawing
savagely at scraps of life—wants
them to suffer just like we did,
through all the joy and the angst
and the pain. We love to watch
them squirm, because in the end,
we’re nothing more than heartless
bastards—as I’m sure you’ll
become, too, someday.

Opium8's 500-Word Memoir Contest is officially closed.  Expect a list of finalists by early May, 2009.