Hot Diggety Dog!
Tails from the Bark Side
Submissions Now Open!
We are very proud to launch our sixth annual Share Your Story Anthology Angels Writing Competition.
Please submit either a complete short story up to 1500 words (no first chapters or to be continued…) or a poem of no more than 650 words. The theme is ‘Hot Diggety Dog! Tails from the Bark Side’ and our judges are looking for funny, quirky and whimsical stories about man’s best friend. We would love you to have the chance to be published in our next anthology with copies to be donated to Story Dogs.
From the Judges
When you are writing, please remember to consider your target audience is children who are not fluent readers. Story Dogs provide an opportunity for children to read in a non-judgemental setting. The children’s focus improves, their literacy skills increase and their confidence soars. The accepting, loving nature of dogs gives this program its magic and helps children relax, open up, try harder and have fun while reading to a friendly, calm dog. We would love to give the wonderful woofers at Story Dogs something fur-bulous to listen to.
You can enter as many times as you like however all work must be original.
School students are more than welcome to enter.
The best entries will be included in an anthology entitled “Hot Diggety Dog” and will be launched in October 2023.
Our goal in 2023 is to raise enough money to sponsor our own Story Dog.
Story Dogs is a non-profit organisation. The program is free of charge for children and one-on-one reading sessions are delivered entirely by volunteers.
At Story Dogs, all costs are covered by dog sponsorships, fundraising and donations. It costs approximately $500 per year to put a Dog Team into a primary school. As Story Dogs is a non-profit organisation. All monies raised go directly to putting more dogs into schools to help more children become life-long readers.
Entry Fee
$30 per entry
On submission of the below form you will be redirected to the checkout on the Authors Online website so you can pay the entry fee. Alternatively, please click here.
Direct Deposit Details on Request.
Guidelines
Entries open on 1st January 2023 and close at 9pm on 30th April 2023
- Entries must be submitted by the below form or emailed to Michelle Worthington at mworthington.author@gmail.com.
- Please include your name, address, contact phone number and title of your entry in the body of the email.
- If you are under 18, please include your age, Grade and School name in the body of the email.
- Attach your entry as a Word doc. Please include the title of your entry, your name and email address in the header of each page and page numbers in the footer.
- International entries are welcome, but must be in English.
- Don’t include illustration notes.
- If you are offered publication in the anthology, you must agree to have your work professionally edited if required, at no charge to you, with changes made at the editor’s discretion.
- Authors retain full copyright on work.
- The judges decision will be final. Don’t go barking up the wrong tree.
Entry Form
About Story Dogs
Leah Sheldon and Janine Sigley formed the non-profit Story Dogs organisation in 2009 in Murwillumbah, NSW. At the time both Leah and Janine had primary school aged children.
After seeing a similar program operating in the USA on the internet they decided Australia needed such a program. They came up with Story Dogs, based on the successful American literacy program, Reading Education Assistance Dogs (R.E.A.D.), which was launched in 1999 in Utah, USA. R.E.A.D. was the first comprehensive literacy program built around the appealing idea of children and young adolescents reading to dogs.
When children read to a dog, the outcomes are amazing! It is a non-judgemental setting, the children’s focus improves, their literacy skills increase and their confidence soars. The accepting, loving nature of dogs gives this program its magic and helps children relax, open up, try harder and have fun while reading to a friendly, calm dog. Woof!
Find out more about Story Dog by visiting: https://www.storydogs.org.au/
