The Journal's First Annual Short-Short Fiction Contest is underway, and the entries are already beginning to trickle in. Join the party! We're talking short-short-short, here -- 99 words or fewer. We've semi-assembled an all-star team of judges, who will read the stories blind and pick their favorites. The best of the best will be featured in an upcoming issue. There will be prizes of some sort.

General hint, non-binding upon the judges or the entrants: Everyone likes to read about the place they live.

This is exciting! We launched the fiction issue last year with Crawdad Nelson's excellent short story "California Improved" (Feb. 7, 2008), and it's taken us a bit too long to get back to it. We're thinking, with fingers crossed, that this is a beautiful way of democratizing the thing and getting a lot more voices in there at the same time.

Send your entries to fiction@northcoastjournal.com, or snail-mail them to North Coast Journal, Fiction Contest, 145 G St., Suite A, Arcata, Calif., 95521. Deadline: Feb. 15.