Education Law

And the winner (or loser) is . . .

While others are occupied with the Olympics, BoardBuzz has gotten wind of another kind of contest. A battle of wits, if you will. The annual award for bad writing was announced recently, and thankfully BoardBuzz was absent from the list. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, crafter of the famous "It was a dark and stormy night," phrase, seeks to identify the worst in writing.

Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. The contest (hereafter referred to as the BLFC) was the brainchild (or Rosemary's baby) of Professor Scott Rice, whose graduate school excavations unearthed the source of the line "It was a dark and stormy night."

This year's winner, Garrison Spik, crafted this doozy, "Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J." And BoardBuzz loved it!

For more information on the winners, check out the article on CNN.com or the official Web site of the contest. And if you're feeling extra ambitious, take a crack at your own bad writing and leave it in our comments.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on August 14, 2008 (boomark / email).