Don’t miss these action-packed match-ups.
- Character Assassination — Extra points for killing off characters with weapons other than guns. Points deducted for car accidents that seem a little too convenient.
- Wall Staring — No coffee-sipping permitted. Participants will be tested for caffeine.
Standard-issue swag at the novelist training camp. - Laundry Procrastination — Red sock in white load is a disqualifying error.
- Long Jump — Best use of an implausible plot twist.
- Synchronized Sipping — Two writers meet at nearby coffee shop, actual writing highly discouraged.
- Women’s Platform — Medal awarded to the agent or editor who convinces the largest number of reclusive novelists to join Twitter.
- Angst Spiral — Highest points awarded for public spiraling. Ongoing Twitter rants about other writers almost always take the gold.
- Research Ultra-marathon — Medal awarded to the writer who spends more time Googling ancient bathing practices than actually writing. Or bathing.
- Freestyle Smack Talk — Medal awarded to the writer who most smugly insults his or her fellow panelists at a writing conference, then blames ignorance or alcohol or both.
- Rhythmic Gardening — Much like the Rhythmic Vacuuming of the Winter Olympics, contestants should spend as much time as possible doing anything other than writing, then justify it by insisting they were thinking about their novel the whole time.
God speed, my fellow athletes! I’ll see you at the medal ceremony.
THE PAST IS NEVER is the winner of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, and the Mississippi Author Award for Adult Fiction (selected by the Mississippi Library Association). This southern gothic novel steeped in local lore was selected as an "Okra Pick" by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. Tyson's debut novel THREE RIVERS was a finalist for both the Colorado Book Award for Literary Fiction and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction. She was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi and now lives, writes, and teaches in Denver, Colorado.
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