The 'Banned Books' Contest: Fight Censor

Support Banned Books!

"[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers." — Judy Blume

Could Judy Blume, celebrated children's author, be right? Are there books never written and things never said simply because someone else might censor them? Writing should never be an exercise in futility!

Make your voice heard. Live up to the deviantART name. It's time to cherish some banned books.

DYK: The Where's Waldo? books are some of the most challenged and banned books of all time.  _{Maybe they couldn't find him?}


How?

In honor of the most frequently challenged and banned books, and in order to raise awareness for the cause (down with censorship!), we are sponsoring a contest in two parts. It's so important that it even spans two entire galleries!


Part One: Fan Fiction

It's no secret that some of the most challenged and banned books also tend to be some of our favorites. After all, just how many schools has Harry Potter been banned from? But the recent big sellers aren't the only favorites pushed aside! Books like 1984 (Orwell), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (Twain), Beloved (Morrison), The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger), and countless others have also seen their rights to shelf time stripped from the overzealous among us.

So what can we do about it? Show how much we love them, of course!

The Rules

Using the listed books or series below, create a piece of fan fiction that celebrates the style, voice, tone, characters, or creations of your favorite 'banned' book. You cannot copy the story, of course, but you are free to use the characters and worlds you've encountered to create something entirely your own, spun from the web of one of these great storytellers.

Books

Gilgamesh: A New English Version (Mitchell)
The Things They Carried (O'Brien)
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
The Lord of the Flies (Golding)
1984 (Orwell)
Heart of Darnkess (Conrad)
Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut)
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)
Beloved (Morrison)
The Chocolate War (Cormier)
Romietta and Julio (Draper)
Monster (W.D. Meyers)
And Tango Makes Three (Richarson/Parnell)
The Lovely Bones (Sebold)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Chbosky)
Carrie (King)
Cujo (King)
James and the Giant Peach (Dahl)
The Outsiders (Hinton)
A Wrinkle in Time (L'Engle)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Kesey)
Brave New World (Huxley)

Series

Harry Potter (Rowling)
Junie B. Jones (Park)
The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)
The "Alice" series (Naylor)
The "Twilight" series (S. Meyer)
"His Dark Materials" trilogy (Pullman)


The Nitty-Gritty

NO SEX BETWEEN CHARACTERS WHO DO NOT HAVE SEX IN THE ORIGINAL TEXT. This is not a contest for erotic fan fiction, and inappropriate sexual contact in your story or poem will have your entry disqualified.

Both poetry and prose are accepted.
Your entry must be a new deviation created for this contest.
All entries MUST use a book or series from the list as inspiration. Fan fiction involving unlisted books or series will be disqualified.
Please mention which book/series you are using for inspiration in the Author's Comments.
Prose entries cannot be shorter than 100 words or longer than 3,000 words.
Poetry entries must include at least two lines but cannot have more than 40.
No more than two (2) submissions per person.
Submissions should comply with dA submission policies and standards.
Entries must be sent to GeneratingHype, in a note entitled FANFIC, by 12:00AM (GMT) 6 October 2008.

Entries will be judged for how accurately they depict the characters/creations of the original novel or series within a new and entirely original context. Please keep in mind that common conventions such as grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling will also be taken into consideration.


Part Two: Forbidden Themes (Straight Lit)

So fan fiction isn't really your thing? No problem.  After looking through the 100 Most Commonly Challenged Books of the Last Century, we began to see some common themes emerge. Apparently, people do not like books depicting homosexuality, any religion other than Christianity, teenagers, girls and sex (even in the educational sense), profanity (ever), racial/ethnic slurs (even when used in context), Communism, drug use and abuse, or anything considered "scary" in the 'little children horror books' sense (and beyond).

While that pretty much eliminates 95% of all the good books ever written, we're confident that censorship need not hinder you. Therefore, you are charged with a task: tackle one of the themes below, either in a poem or prose piece, and show the world just how valuable words can be.


The Rules

Write a poem or prose piece that deals with one of the topics below. Be sure to make the connection between your writing and the topic clear, and try to develop a theme (topic + author's opinion/point of view/message about the topic) that depicts just how important writing about these topics can be.

The Topics

Homosexuality
Puberty
Magic
The Supernatural
Religion (other than Christianity)
Communism
Drug Use/Abuse
Monsters (real or imagined)
Racism/Prejudice
Mental Illness
Sexually-active teens
Suicide
Rape
Violence
Feminism


Gettin' Down & Dirty

Both poetry and prose are accepted.
Your entry must be a new deviation created for this contest.
All entries MUST address a topic from the list above. Writing that solely involves other topics will be disqualified.
Please mention which topic you are addressing in the Author's Comments.
Prose entries cannot be shorter than 100 words or longer than 3,000 words.
Poetry entries must include at least two lines but cannot have more than 40.
Prose entries should be no longer than 3,000 words and poetry entries should be no longer 30 lines.
No more than two (2) submissions per person.
Submissions should comply with dA submission policies and standards.
Entries must be sent to GeneratingHype, in a note entitled BANNED, by 12:00AM (GMT) 6 October 2008.

Entries will be judged for how creatively they address the given topic and how well-developed and impressive the theme becomes. Please keep in mind that common conventions such as grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling will also be taken into consideration.


Judges

GeneratingHype
EveningDownpour
aunjuli

_{Wanna be a judge?  Note GeneratingHype to see if there are spots available!}


Do More!

The American Library Association will be celebrating Banned Books Week from 27 September - 4 October 2008.  Find a way to get involved and help end censorship where you live.  Or, if that's too much to ask, check out the ALA Banned Books Week activities on Facebook or MySpace.


Special thanks to pandorapandora for helping to set-up and plan this contest, and for bringing the idea to our attention in the first place.