Wisco professor inspires bad writers

Alex Olson |

A University of Wisconsin Oshkosh associate professor has recieved an award for her terribly written sentence. Sue Fondrie earned the grand prize for her submission to the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest – an annual event that dares entrants to fabricate the worst opening sentences to equally awful imaginary novels.

 In case you hadn’t heard of this unique contest, it was named after the novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, famous for the beginning line, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

According to the Torronto Sun, Fondrie’s following line was the shortest winner of the grand prize in the contest’s history:

"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.”

I’m not one to judge, but her words truly spoke to me. There is something about a growing pile of vane-chopped sparrows that really reaches inside and yanks at my ol' heart strings. Be sure to check out the losers winners of other categories, such as fantasy, romance, adventure and sci-fi right here. You know you want a piece of those deliciously repulsive passages.