The Little Bird Writing Contest is an international contest exclusively for innovative, emerging short fiction writers. The contest opens each spring when the birds come back and showcases the excellent stories that come from Sarah Selecky Writing School. The 2010 Little Bird contest winners developed their stories around different writing prompts provided by Sarah Selecky. Volume 1 features winning stories chosen by Matthew J. Trafford and Jessica Westhead: “Contrast Fluid” by Brittany Smith “Moving Parts” by Lana Pesch “Cognitive Dissonance” by Mary B. Valencia Proceeds from anthology sales go towards the Peelee Island Bird Observatory and the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory to help protect the real little birds out there. Brittany Smith is a Toronto-based writer of long and short fiction. Her work has appeared in the Humber Literary Review, Broken Pencil , and in the journals Pithead Chapel and Echolocation . Most days you can find Britt working as a writing coach at Firefly Creative Writing. Lana Pesch ’s debut story collection, Moving Parts , was published in 2015 and shortlisted for the 2016 ReLit Awards. She has written and produced plays for stage, radio and film and her writing has appeared in Little Bird Stories : Volumes I and II and Taddle Creek , Geist , and ELLE Canada . She was longlisted for the 2014 CBC Short Story Prize and won the Random House of Canada Creative Writing Award at the University of Toronto in 2012. Lana was born in Saskatchewan, studied in Montreal, and is an alumnus of the Banff Wired Writing Studio. She lives in Toronto and is a freelance writer, editor, and producer. A graduate from the Masters in Creative Writing program at the University of Wales, Mary B. Valencia has published in Descant , Existere , the Globe and Mail , bunchfamily.ca, NOW Magazine , and with Gomer Press in the UK. She received the 2012 EVENT creative nonfiction prize and was first runner-up in the 2010 PRISM international fiction contest. Her writing is now appearing at comedy venues across Toronto as part of her stand-up persona routine Mary Bee.