Gather.com – THE ‘gathering place’ for authors and publishers to share their work with an interested, informed, and engaged audience -- has announced its first short fiction competition. Entries not to exceed 3000 words are due by January 15, 2006; the winner will be announced in early February.

The winning story will be reviewed by Houghton Mifflin’s in-house editor for “The Best American Short Stories” series and will be featured on Gather.com and VoidMagazine.com. The winner also will receive a cash prize, a selection of best-selling titles from Houghton Mifflin (including the “Best American” 2005 series), and a subscription to the “Believer” literary magazine. All contest entries will be published on Gather.com, and the authors can invite their friends and families to read the submissions.

There is no contest entry fee. Entries must be in English, original, unpublished and not submitted elsewhere until winners are announced. Details at http://fictioncontest.gather.com

Open to non-US'ns?

(...has also been posted on the "Looking for (writers, speakers,...)" forum below, which is probably the canonical place)

Has it also been posted in the forum titled Wretched Foul Spam Posted by Commercially Naive Morons? hmmmm, that's odd, I can't seem to find that useful thread just now...

oh, and by the way, anyone want to buy a collection of books on spam, net etiquette and spam?