The Little Bird Writing Contest is an international contest exclusively for innovative, emerging short fiction writers. The contest opens each spring when the birds come back and showcases the excellent stories that come from Sarah Selecky Writing School.
The 2010 Little Bird contest winners developed their stories around different writing prompts provided by Sarah Selecky. Volume 1 features winning stories chosen by Matthew J. Trafford and Jessica Westhead:

• “Contrast Fluid” by Brittany Smith
• “Moving Parts” by Lana Pesch
• “Cognitive Dissonance” by Mary B. Valencia

Proceeds from anthology sales go towards the Peelee Island Bird Observatory and the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory to help protect the real little birds out there.

Brittany Smith is a Toronto-based writer of long and short fiction. Her work has appeared in the Humber Literary Review, Broken Pencil, and in the journals Pithead Chapel and Echolocation. Most days you can find Britt working as a writing coach at Firefly Creative Writing.

Lana Pesch’s debut story collection, Moving Parts, was published in 2015 and shortlisted for the 2016 ReLit Awards. She has written and produced plays for stage, radio and film and her writing has appeared in Little Bird Stories: Volumes I and II and Taddle Creek, Geist, and ELLE Canada. She was longlisted for the 2014 CBC Short Story Prize and won the Random House of Canada Creative Writing Award at the University of Toronto in 2012. Lana was born in Saskatchewan, studied in Montreal, and is an alumnus of the Banff Wired Writing Studio. She lives in Toronto and is a freelance writer, editor, and producer.

A graduate from the Masters in Creative Writing program at the University of Wales, Mary B. Valencia has published in Descant, Existere, the Globe and Mail, bunchfamily.ca, NOW Magazine, and with Gomer Press in the UK. She received the 2012 EVENT creative nonfiction prize and was first runner-up in the 2010 PRISM international fiction contest. Her writing is now appearing at comedy venues across Toronto as part of her stand-up persona routine Mary Bee.

Jessica Westhead's short stories have appeared in major literary magazines including Hazlitt, Five Dials, Room, Maisonneuve, Matrix, Geist, The New Quarterly, and Indiana Review. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards, selected for a Journey Prize anthology, and nominated for a National Magazine Award. Her chapbook Those Girls was published by Greenboathouse Books in 2006. Her novel Pulpy & Midge, published by Coach House Books in 2007, was nominated for a ReLit Award. Her critically acclaimed short story collection And Also Sharks, published by Cormorant Books in 2011, was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book, a nominee for the CBC Bookie Awards and a ReLit Award, one of Kobo's Best Ebooks of 2011, and a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Short Fiction Prize. CBC Books has called her one of the "10 Canadian women writers you need to read now." Jessica lives in Toronto with her husband and daughter.

Jessica Westhead's profile page

Matthew J. Trafford's fiction has appeared in The Malahat Review and Matrix and has been anthologized in I.V. Lounge Nights and Darwin's Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow. He has won the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction and an honourable mention at the National Magazine Awards and has twice been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Prize. He lives in Toronto, where he works with deaf college students and performs long-form improv with his brother in their two-person troupe, The Bromos.

Matthew Trafford's profile page