To celebrate this year's National Short Story Week we're launching a short story competition on November 7th for Year 7 and Year 8 students.

Students who enter must write a short story of between 900 and 1000 words with the title "The Choice".

The deadline for entries will be 9th January 2012, with the winners being announced in spring 2012.

There will be four runners-up, one boy and one girl from each year, and an overall winner. We've got some great prizes, including the winning entry being recorded by a professional actor and broadcast online free of charge as a podcast, an e-book of runners-up entries, also available free of charge, and gift vouchers courtesy of What The Dickens: Writing and Literary Gifts.

To take part, students must ask their school library to register for the competition. We will only accept entries from the first 250 schools to register, and each of those schools can submit up to 10 short stories in total.

If you are a Year 7 or 8 student and would like to enter the competition, ask your school librarian to sign up now. If you are a school librarian and haven't already registered your school, now is the time to do it!

School librarians (and not students themselves) should send an email to schools@shortstoryweek.org.uk to secure a place, and to receive full competition details.

Good luck!