Event

The Fifth Annual Shorties: A Virtual Awards Gala for the annual Matchbook Story Contest

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Join us for a Live Reveal of this year’s Matchbook Story Contest winner! Our friends from Write Out Loud will do dramatic readings of this year’s ten finalists. We’ll also hear from a past winner about how the Library has impacted their life and a surprise artistic interpretation of last year’s winning story.

The show will be streamed live from the Neil Morgan Auditorium inside the San Diego Central Library @ Joan Λ Irwin Jacobs Common. All 2024 Matchbook Story Contest entrants are invited to attend in person. Non-entrants can watch the event virtually on the Library Foundation SD’s YouTube channel. No RSVP is necessary.

About the Matchbook Story Contest:

Calling all writers! San Diego’s Shortest (and Quirkiest) Short Story Contest is celebrating its 8th year in style with the virtual return of San Diego’s shortest awards gala!

The Library Shop’s 8th Annual Matchbook Story contest started as an oddball challenge to fit a short story inside a book of matches and has grown into one of the Library Shop’s most popular programs and Library patrons and Shop customers have collected each year’s limited-edition matchbook. Every year, the winner receives a $50 Library Shop gift card, and their story is printed on 2,000 matchbooks available for purchase at the Library Shop, published in the Library Connections e‑newsletter, and installed as part of the Tiny Book Display in the Hervey Family Rare Book Room at the San Diego Central Library.

Submissions to the Matchbook Story Contest will be accepted online until Nov. 15.