Chicago-area students: Enter the Sun-Times’ The Imagination Project short-story contest

They say Chicago is a writers’ town. Having given the world the likes of Gwendolyn Brooks, Sandra Cisneros and Veronica Roth, Saul Bellow, Nelson Algren and Scott Turow, that’s hard to refute.

Now, we want to encourage the next crop of writers. So the Chicago Sun-Times is asking Chicago-area students to enter the newspaper’s The Imagination Project short-story contest for kids in elementary, middle and high school in the city and suburbs.

Just as we did with our recent art contest, we’re inviting students in those age groups to get creative with short stories centered around a theme of heroism.

Submissions must be original works of fiction — no real names, please — of no more than 500 words and must be submitted as PDFs or Microsoft Word documents by June 5. Go online to https://chicago.suntimes.com/pages/imagination for complete contest details including where to send entries.

We’ll choose up to five winners in each of the three age categories, with prizes, and publish the best work.

Chicago novelist Sara Paretsky once said the best thing about writing was you “get to explore a thousand different personalities, all by going deep into your soul.”

We’re looking forward to seeing what’s deep inside the imaginations of Chicago-area kids.

SEE ART CONTEST WINNERS