Inside the Prose Bowl, the American-Idol style fiction series that’s welcoming to new writers

“I started out with a pretty pure plan that it would just be a reading,” Green said, “but we had a lot of input from the venue that they were hoping for us to do something a little different. They gave us some suggestions that made us want to do something a little bit more competitive, but we wanted to keep it faux competitive. Because if you’re asking people to potentially get up on stage for the first time, you don’t be like ‘Oh, and it’s a competition.’ ”

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The series started last August and is held every third Tuesday of the month at Pete’s Candy Shop in Williamsburg, including tonight — show up by 6:15pm to enter your name on the list of readers. Hague serves as the well-read Ryan Seacrest to Greens’ artist in residence Simon Cowell, but with a heart and impressive vocabulary. After each reading a panel of judges give their critiques, including words of praise, encouragement or advice and then it’s on to the next reader.

Once all four contestants have read, the panel chooses the top two writers from the night to move onto the lightning round. Brevity is the name of the game here, with each contestant attempting to tell a story in no more than three sentences, and sometimes in just one.

Sunday night’s event, held at The Kraine Theater, was the culmination of the year of literary skirmishes, sort of like the actual Super Bowl but with words instead of CTE. Each contestant, the winner of a previous Prose Bowl, was given five minutes to read an original work. While amateur status is often a requirement for an Olympic event, the writers for the Super Prose Bowl were anything but.

The opening story by Sangeetha Alagappan was a romantic epic about a fisherman who falls in love with a mermaid to disastrous ends. P.J. Kryfko, decked out in cape and shutter shades, followed next with an inventive piece about a father who travels in time to get the autograph of William Shakespeare (properly pronounced Shack-Spear) for his daughter. Brokelyn writer Bridget McFadden was among the competitors, reading the shortest piece of the night (clocking in at just three minutes and eight seconds) about an unusual couple in various states of undress, the final reveal of which is ingenious and macabre. The final reading of the night was a monologue by Gina Levitan, that read like an Google Inc orientation pamphlet by way of The Hunger Games.

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Finalists Lindsey Boyle and Johanna Buch ended the night with three lightning rounds of original stories that could fit into a single tweet. While the winner was selected by audience applause (Hague came prepared with an Applause-O-Meter app on his phone) both writers made strong showings in the first round with their prose.

Buch, who finished a close second, shared an original story of a baby shower from hell (or my kind of hell, at least) that had themes of lost friendship, displacement and a term for every woman with 2.5 kids and perfect hair that I shall not soon forget: The Cardigans. Boyle, the night’s champion, wrote a haunting and delicate piece about a mother who becomes unnerved after her young daughter announces at the breakfast table with certainty that she will die later that day.

While the series is a competition, Green is quick to point out that the overall goal is to create a comfortable space for new writers to share their work.

“Part of our whole deal is that there is no submission process, there’s no curating… there’s lot’s of other reading series that are already doing that,” he said. “We’re there for people who maybe don’t know how to get into those readings, or don’t think they’re ready. We’re just trying to have fun and give a voice to people who just want to get up on stage and be heard.”

This sentiment was echoed by Boyle who considers Prose Bowl an opportunity to read her work as well as feel part of an emerging writer community.

“Prose Bowl has given me the opportunity to share my stories with an amazing community of writers, editors and fiction lovers,” she said. “You don’t have to be published to participate, so it’s the perfect home for emerging voices.”

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As the winner of the event, Boyle will serve as a judge for the next Prose Bowl, taking place tonight at Pete’s Candy Shop in Williamsburg. There is no fee for entry or submission required. As extra incentive all new writers will get their names dropped in the hat twice for even greater chance to get on stage. The night’s champion will receive a free drink and a “doo-dad of infinite impracticability.”

For more information check out The Prose Bowl website, Twitter and Facebook. 

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