Short Stories for a Seventeen Year Old Girl: The Broken Social Scene short story contest

Any indie music fan worth her salt would agree: Toronto independent music collective/supergroup Broken Social Scene created one of the most indelible albums of the last decade with 2002’s You Forgot it in People. Not content to be just any awesome rock record, it also made stars of Leslie Feist, Jason Collett, Kevin Drew and many more of the band’s approximately 4000 members, and was so beloved by auteur filmmaker Ryan Fleck he used it to score his breakthrough 2006 film Half Nelson (starring one then only semi-known Ryan Gosling).

Now, on the eve of the album’s tenth anniversary–which, by the way, is a fact that makes me feel super, duper old–Canadian publisher House of Anansi is doing something special: in conjunction with the band, they’re hosting a You Forgot it in People short story contest.

Says House of Anansi:

Short stories must be submitted electronically, must be an original, unpublished work in English with a minimum of 1000 words and a maximum of 5000 words, and must use the title of one of the 13 tracks from You Forgot It In People as the title or theme of the short story — if not the title of the story, then the song title must appear in full somewhere in the story.

So get writing, BSS fans. (Incidentally, this is not the first time the band has ventured into multimedia territory with their songs; in 2010, director Bruce MacDonald helmed This Movie is Broken, a fictional film about a couple whose relationship hinges on a Broken Social Scene concert.)

More on the contest–including the track list, sweet prizes, deadline, and judges (including Feist!) is available here. So, who’s entering?

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0 Thoughts to “Short Stories for a Seventeen Year Old Girl: The Broken Social Scene short story contest”

  1. “Must be 18 or older to enter and a resident of Canada, excluding Quebec.” Doesn’t that limit the entrants to actual members of Broken Social Scene?

  2. Admiral Snackbar

    “Must be 18 or older to enter and a resident of Canada, excluding Quebec.” Doesn’t that limit the entrants to actual members of Broken Social Scene?

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