Last Chance: Sign Up For 'Short Story Challenge'

From Paul Auster to Pete Hamill, Jhumpa Lahiri to Jonathan Safran Foer, Martin Amis and Jonathan Ames, Brooklyn has a long, fine tradition of cultivating writers. If you happen to consider yourself to be among these great writers, why not test your storytelling mettle against the rest of the country?

The 7th Annual Short Story Challenge will officially begin tomorrow, Feb. 22. A three-tiered competition, the Challenge assigns writers a genre, subject and character to use in creating a short story, with varying word counts and lengths of time permitted as each degree of the competition is completed.

Established authors will judge the submissions, and peers will have the opportunity to provide feedback as well.

And if you like money, the grand prize winner will walk away with $1,500.

So what are you waiting for? To register, "first, download and read the Official Rules & Participation Agreement. When you have read and understood the rules, you are ready to register by clicking here. The entry fee is $39 by the Early Entry Deadline of January 17, 2013 and $49 until the Final Entry Deadline of February 21, 2013," states the official Story Challenge 2013 website.

Good luck!