Published
First, though, I would like to take just a moment to reflect on the past year and look briefly toward where we are headed in the future.
This year has seen the contests grow in tremendous ways. One major change to all the contests was the introduction of a traid entry system. In an effort to encourage people to write more and help them learn through practical experience, SibScript now has three deadlines throughout the year: March 1st, June 1st, and October 1st. Entrants can now enter multiple traids until a creation is selected as a finalist. We feel this system furthers our goal of assisting creators. It is also a fun way to interact with entrants throughout the year.
For the first time we participated in Salt Lake Comic Con as a vendor. The experience was fantastic and allowed us to connect with more people and provided a great venue for an exciting announcement: the creation of a fourth contest. PhoenixMoon Graphic Novel Contest was introduced for the 2017 contest year. This contest combines both art and writing. One striking difference for this contest from its predecessors is the ability for teams of collaborators to contribute. Just like its predecessors, the contest has divisions for adults, school age, and young school age entrants. We look forward to the PhoenixMoon’s first year.
For the other contests, 2016 was a excellent year. We received more entries than previous years and they were greatly enjoyed by the judges. The hard part this year was selecting the best entries both in preliminary judging and the final judging rounds. We hope you enjoy the anthology as much as we have.
As always, the Æther Illustration, DragonComet Short Story, and Odyssey Poetry Contests continue to offer everyone an opportunity to put their skills, including those learned at LTUE, to use. Each contest showcases a different set of skills and those showcased in this anthology are great examples of the best in each division.
Next year, we expect more great changes to come. We hope you will all join us again and can’t wait to see the new year’s entries.