Matrix Magazine/Pop Montreal Litpop Competition!!!

The 2011 Litpop Awards Competition is now open!

Enjoy the dirty glamour of rock stardom, combined with the cultural capital of literary esteem. Enter the 2011 Matrix Magazine/Pop Montreal Litpop Awards! Now with a new category of Creative Non-Fiction!

The Pop Montreal International Music Festival and Matrix Magazine have once again teamed up to bring you Canada’s most innovative and exciting literary competition. We are looking for the most unique and original voices in North American writing. So if you’re an emerging poet, essay writer, or short story writer, it’s time to prove it! If you have what it takes, you will get your work published in Matrix, and get free travel to Pop Montreal for a night in your honour.

Just send your work in for consideration by June 20. Three winners, one from each category of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction will receive a round-trip ticket to Pop Montreal from September 21-25, 2011, a VIP pass to the Pop Montreal Festival, free accommodation at a bed and breakfast, fall publication in Matrix Magazine with full honorarium, and presentation at a special Matrix Litpop event during the festival.

The deadline for all submissions is June 20. Winners will be notified in August. Poets are asked to send no more than 5 poems; fiction and non-fiction writers should send stories of no more than 3000 words. Each entry is 25$ and entries and entry fees should be mailed to Matrix Publications, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., LB 658, Montreal QC, H3G 1M8. Cheques or money orders should be made out to “Matrix Publications.” Multiple entries are welcome. Entries can also be emailed to litpop2011@gmail.com and will be considered valid once payment is verified. Full contest rules and regulations can be found at popmontreal.com and matrixmagazine.org.

The CREATIVE NON-FICTION judge is John K. Samson, the acclaimed singer and songwriter for indie rock band The Weakerthans. The band's most recent studio release Reunion Tour garnered praise from an assortment of publications. He has published poetry and essays in Matrix and Maisonneuve. He lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, where he's also the managing editor Arbeiter Ring Publishing.

The POETRY judge is Mike Spry, the author of the poetry collection JACK which was shortlisted for the Quebec Writers' Federation A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. He is the author of the forthcoming short story collection Distillery Songs. He lives in Montreal.

The FICTION judge Katrina Best is originally from the U.K. and now lives in Montreal, where she works as a story editor, screenwriter, and script analyst. Her debut collection of short fiction, Bird Eat Bird, is a regional Commonwealth Prize winner and a finalist for the Commonwealth Prize for best first book.