Heidelberg Club of New York sponsors travel writing contest

NEW YORK, NY – Dr. Eckart Wuerzner, the Lord Mayor of Heidelberg, announced a new prize recently, the Heidelberg Mark Twain Award, for travel writing about his famed German city.

NEW YORK, NY – Dr. Eckart Wuerzner, the Lord Mayor of Heidelberg, announced a new prize recently, the Heidelberg Mark Twain Award, for travel writing about his famed German city. The award, which will be given every three years, includes a prize of Euros 5,000 (US$6,346) and an all-expenses paid trip for two to Heidelberg in September 2011. This is the largest single travel-writing award in the English language, to the sponsor’s knowledge. The contest is administered by the Heidelberg Club of New York, which is also selecting the judges for the event. First submissions are due by December 15, 2010, second and final submissions by April 1, 2011.

The Heidelberg Mark Twain Award committee is currently organizing a group of distinguished candidates for the jury.

Mark Twain fell in love with Heidelberg during his second trip to Europe, looking for a quiet place to write. In May of 1878, he arrived in the fabled city, staying for three months. He was aware that the name of Heidelberg was derived from the German word meaning “Huckleberry Mountain” as he was already working on the book that would become The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and wanted to finish it during his European visit. During his earlier steamboat days on America’s greatest river, he had often passed the town of Heidelberg, Mississippi, too. As to writing about the city, Twain described it in A Tramp Abroad, the sequel, in a way, to his first best-seller, Innocents Abroad, published in 1869. Lucy Gordan, a previous winner of the Heidelberg Mark Twain Award, writes that Twain’s boat trips on the Neckar inspired him to write in Heidelberg about Huck’s raft trips in Chapter 16 of the Finn book, “ending Twain’s three-year writer’s block.”

Anyone can enter, but to qualify for the prize, the submission must have been published or disseminated in English during the period from April 1, 2008 through March 31, 2011 anywhere in the world and in any kind of media, excluding self-published websites and blogs. Moreover, the submission must concern Heidelberg and its aspects, preferably in the following fields (but not limited to these fields): architecture, the arts, culture, food and beverages, history, literature, music, people, sports, tourism, and traditions. The winner will be expected to visit Heidelberg in September, 2011, or forfeit the travel portion of the prize.

The kinds of media will include, but not be limited to, print, TV, or movie film (not still photography), radio, websites, books (only on Heidelberg, no excerpts from books on larger topics).

For further rules and more information, go to: www.hcionline.de .

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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