welcome to the nonlinear library, where we use text-to-speech software to convert the best writing from the rationalist and ea communities into audio. this is: EA Forum Creative Writing Contest: $22,000 in prizes for good stories, published by Aaron Gertler on the effective altruism forum. Update: The contest is now closed! All submissions made by 11:59 PST on Friday, October 29 will be considered. This includes a few posts whose authors had trouble submitting, but contacted me about before the deadline. Stories are a key part of how EA has grown since its beginning. Some examples: The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle, which probably did more to launch the EA movement than any other piece of writing Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which introduced many readers to important ideas about good epistemics and AI risk 500 Million, But Not A Single One More, which has been read aloud in conference halls for hundreds of people and is one of the first essays in the EA Handbook The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant, which seems to have been extremely influential for one of the world’s most prominent entrepreneurs (who has since given tens of millions of dollars to various EA-adjacent causes) There’s a lot of “rational fiction” out there — stories about people thinking clearly to solve problems. Many of those stories also incorporate EA themes. But they tend to reveal their ideas over dozens of chapters, making it hard for someone to pick up on those themes unless they’re willing to dedicate many hours of time. We’d like to see creative work that “gets to the point” quickly — stories that, in a single sitting, might inspire someone to find out more about effective altruism, whether that means the whole movement or a single idea/cause area/intervention. So we’re running a contest! We want to see you write or share stories and creative nonfiction with EA themes. And we’ve added prizes to sweeten the deal.[1] Notably, your work doesn’t have to use EA jargon or cover a popular cause area, as long as it gets across the core idea of "using evidence and reason to help others effectively". That said, it doesn't hurt if the work references popular EA topics in some way, or tries to directly inspire readers to find out more about EA. For example, HPMOR includes a note along the lines of “to learn what Harry knows, read the LessWrong Sequences”. We’d be happy to see stories that would justify the note “to learn what X knows, join a Virtual Program”.[2] What kinds of content can I submit? We’ll have two categories: Fictional stories, like “The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant” Creative nonfiction, like “500 Million, But Not A Single One More” No need to include the category in your submission. What are the prizes? Update: CEA initially funded $10,000 in prizes. However, a generous donor (Owen Cotton-Barratt) added another $12,000. We’re now offering $22,000 in total prize money, with the following structure: First prize (among all entries): $10,000 Two second prizes: $3,000 each If first prize goes to a fiction entry, at least one second prize will go to a nonfiction entry, and vice-versa Four third prizes: $1,000 each Eight honorable mentions: $250 each What’s the deadline? Entries must be published on the EA Forum no later than 11:59 pm PST on Friday, October 29 (initial deadline extended by two weeks after a few people said it seemed short). If you’d like to be kind to the judges and let us space out our reading over time, you can publish earlier :-) How do I submit content? We recommend publishing your entry on the EA Forum and tagging it with Creative Writing Contest. We want lots of people to read and discuss your submissions — we think the Forum will be a really fun place if good stories start showing up. However, we won’t use upvotes or comments as part of our process for choosing a winner. If you'd strongly prefer not to publish the work for any reason (including the desire to submit it elsewhere), you can submit it through this f...