The Community’s leading establishment for children and young adults – the XYZ Foundation, has, during the lockdown, organized over 150 activities for its members and their families, across various online platforms including quizzes, rangoli, antakshari, games, experiments and various daily challenges, receiving over a whopping 2,500 entries. One of the activities which gained great popularity is ‘Creative Writing’, where members, volunteers, parents or any of their family members could also participate in writing short stories on any topic they choose, in keeping with the guidelines listed below. 

The XYZ Foundation, which is an NGO with Zoroastrian children between the ages of 5 to 15 years, has now teamed up with the Community’s leading news-daily, Parsi Times, to open this activity up to anyone who would like to write a short story (approx. 500 words), which needs to be an original account of their experiences, incidents or memories, even related to their childhood! The idea is to gather a good number of short stories and ultimately compile the best of these, as our Community’s very first compendium or collection of short stories, written by community members, for all posterity! Those who would like to write in Gujarati are welcome to share their stories as well.

Kindly note the following Guidelines/Rules which all participants must adhere to: 

– Your Entry must be original, and not copied from any other sources likes books or the internet. It should be approximately 500 words. 

– Your Entry must have a Title along with your/the author’s Name (author) and Age.

– No Covid / Coronavirus related stories will be accepted.

– Your Entry must include the main character with any of these names – Pourushasp, Artaxerxes, Xerxes, Daraius, Cyrus, Jamshed, Behram, Rustom, Ketayun, Tehmurasp or Noshirwan. These names can be shortened. Eg. Noshirwan can be ‘Nosh’ or Ketayun can be ‘Kate’ 

– The story could be based on his life, or an imaginary adventure, superheroes, wizards, and travel… anything which can reveal your imagination.

– You can add as many other characters to your story as you like and you can also collaborate with others for your story!

– Your entry should be submitted in a Word document (format) and mailed to XYZ on: info@xyzfoundation.net 

The criteria for choosing the stories for publication in the compendium will include originality, writing style, grammar and the ability to keep the reader glued till the end! So, put on your creative caps and write your hearts out in your story to become part of the community’s ‘Creating Writing’ history, with XYZ and Parsi Times! 

.

.