The pen is mightier than the sword.
Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton
2024 Grand Prize
Chosen from over 6300 submissions to the 42nd Annual Lyttonaid, Lawrence Person of Austin, Texas has risen to the top of our (steaming) pile to take the crown:
She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck.
Congratulations to Lawrence and a hearty thank you to all the creative and demented Bulweriers who kept us chuckling again this year!
​The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges participants to write an atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written. Our whimsical literary competition honors the novelist Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton and his marvelously awful opening to his 1830 novel Paul Clifford:
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
Each July our Panel of Undistinguished Judges convenes to select the best of the worst sentences submitted in the previous 12 months, and we announce the winners in mid August.
We invite you to learn more about the contest or peruse our copious archive. Thanks for visiting!