The phrase “It was a dark and stormy night” is one of the most well known sentences in literature. Booth Library is looking for another.

Creative minds can submit one sentence to Booth Library’s writing contest beginning Monday for National Library Week.

The week of April 11 is National Library Week, an event to celebrate and raise awareness for libraries and librarians. Booth Library is participating by holding a writing contest where participants can create one creative or humorous sentence.

Clifford Harrison, a Booth Library specialist, said he and the National Library Week committee collectively came up with the idea for the writing contest.

The committee is made up of faculty and staff members.

“Every year we try to do things to involve the students and promote awareness of the library to encourage them to come check us out,” Harrison said.

This is the first year Booth Library will host a writing contest. Last year they held a video gaming night. Two years ago they distributed gift bags of pencils, bookmarks and candy to students in the quads, Harrison said.

The prompt for the writing contest will be open-ended with a few guidelines, asking participants to compose one creative and humorous sentence. The idea came from the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which participants create one sentence of no more than 50 or 60 words as the opening to a story, similar to that of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Anyone can submit an entry to the contest. There will be entry forms and boxes on each service desk in the library Monday through Friday this week.

There will be five winners selected and each will be given a credit to the library’s book sale April 14. Anything from fiction to textbooks will be sold, mostly those that were donated to the library.

“The contest is mainly to have fun and give people a chance to relax, loosen up and get creative,” Harrison said.

Ashley Holstrom can be reached at 581-7942 or

alholstrom@eiu.edu.