Wisconsin Professor Pens Winning Entry in Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

Suzanne Fondrie, an associate professor of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education and Human Services at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh is the 2011 winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The contest, which was established at San Jose University in 1982, asks entrants to compose the worst opening sentence of an imaginary novel. Fondrie’s winning entry was: “Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.” Professor Fondrie’s winning entry was the shortest in the contest’s history.

The contest is named after Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, the Victorian author whose novel Paul Clifford began with the sentence, “It was a dark and stormy night.”