Surbhi News
Shimla, 20 May
Come 2024, Keekli Charitable Trust extended a warm invitation to aspiring writers aged under 25, exclusively encompassing students from schools and colleges nationwide for the third pan-India Short Story Writing Competition. An anthology, that will feature the finest 51 narratives, an endeavour, with its grand unveiling slated for the 14th of November. We are finally pleased to announce the top 51 winners who finally made the cut. We wish to congratulate each and every participant for sharing their work with us and we hope you continue to keep writing. A total of 182 stories were received from all around the country, cities namely, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Nalagarh, Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Chennai, Kolkata, Shimla among many others. This will be the fourth book in the series published by Keekli Charitable Trust. The previous titles have been 51 Scintillating Takes, Fiction Treasure Trove and Dastaan – Kahaniyon ki Duniya — all by children and for children.
It was a tough decision for the jury members, namely, Ms Namita Lal, Dr Usha Bande, Sh Gupteshwar Upadhyay, Ms Kavita Jhala, Dr Ashutosh Kumar and Dr Mrinal Chatterjee, to assess the stories and select the best for the anthology. The parameters given to them were to score on the basis of vocabulary, creativity and story idea and the guidelines also included that the stories be original. However, in due process a few of the stories were found plagiarized, in the form of essays or travelogues which were all disqualified. We hope that you will take this into account when you participate in our competition next year.
The Competition began on 1st February and children had time till 31st March, 2024 to submit the same. The brief of the event was that students under the age of 25 years could participate. The word limit for the story was 1000 to 3500, while these could be in English or Hindi. The Jury also kept the age group in mind while assessing the stories and to maintain total transparency the jury was given only the name, title and class of the child.
The next stage of the competition is mentoring and skill building. Our jury members will take creative writing sessions for all the participants followed by one-on-one sessions with the wines to further guide them to improve the stories. Finally, these will be edited and then published as an Anthology. Children will also have the opportunity to suggest the title for the book, its cover design and supplement their stories with original creative artworks.
Gratitude is extended to our esteemed sponsors, Blue Bells School of Dhalli and our media partner HimachalTonite, whose generous support has made this literary endeavour possible, and heartfelt thanks to our jury members for spending time with these young budding authors.