By entering the contest, you agree to these official rules (hereinafter referred to as "Contest Official Rules"), which constitute a binding contract between you and Short Édition.

1. Contest general information

Contest: BART Lines, BART first ever Short Fiction contest, in partnership with Short Édition (hereinafter referred to as “Contest”).

Organizer: Short Édition Inc., whose registered office is located at 1251 Avenue of the Americas, 3rd Fl., New York, NY 100201 (hereinafter referred to as the “Organizer” or “Short Édition”).

Sponsor: BART, whose headquarters are located at 2150 Webster Street, Oakland, CA 94612 (hereinafter referred to as the “Sponsor” or "BART").

2. Stages of the Contest

Submissions

Once a work is submitted (hereinafter referred to as “Submission”) by an author (hereinafter referred to as “Author”) who qualifies according to the eligibility criteria set forth in Section 5, Submission is checked and validated by the Organizer’s editorial team, who ensures that the Submission qualifies based on the minimum requirements (length, theme, category). Judgments and decisions made by the Organizer’s editorial team as to Submission eligibility or disqualification are at the Organizer’s complete discretion and are final. The Organizer cannot be held responsible towards any other due to a Submission’s qualification or disqualification.

As soon as a Submission is considered as complying with the Contest Official Rules and validated by the Organizer’s editorial team (hereinafter referred to as “Qualifying Submission”), it will be reviewed by Organizer's editorial team. For the whole Contest duration, the Author is not allowed to delete the Qualifying Submission. If the Author's work is accepted elsewhere and he or she wishes to publish elsewhere, then the Author must inform Short Édition before the end of the submissions period (June 30th, 2022), at which point Short Édition will delete the submission from the contest website.

Finalists

All qualifying submissions will be reviewed. The BART Jury panel will selected up to 30 finalists.

The list of all Finalists will be announced on the Contest website on September 22nd, 2022.

The Prizes

Each finalist will receive a $200 honorarium.

Monetary prizes will be paid to the recipients via Paypal or a wire-transfer by the Organizer.

The Jury

The finalists will be selected by a panel of Bay Area literary icons: J. K. Fowler, Daniel Handler, Annalee Newitz, Ishmael Reed, and Ingrid Rojas Contreras.

3. Contest duration

The Contest opens on Wednesday, June 1st, 2022 (12:00 a.m. PDT) and will remain open until Thursday, June 30th, 2022 (11:59 p.m. PDT), or until 400 eligible applications have been received, whichever occurs first. Finalists will be announced on September 22nd, 2022.

4. Authors eligibility

Contest only open to the residents of the five Bay Area counties served by BART District: Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara, who have reached the age of 18.

Organizer will also automatically disqualify and delete as promptly as reasonably possible any submission knowingly received from persons under the age of eighteen (18) in compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 ("COPPA"), and the eligibility age of this contest.

Any Sponsor's employees can enter the contest.

All Authors must create their author account online and submit their Submission(s) using a valid email address.

Authors shall choose their own username while creating their author account — this username will therefore be associated with their Submission(s) when published on the Contest website — and shall also provide their full name and contact information to the Organizer via their online account profile. The Organizer must be able to easily get in touch with each Author for any reason.

After Submission, each Author will be emailed a confirmation of receipt. Authors will receive an email if there is a change in status of their Submission.

5. Submission conditions

General Submission Conditions

No purchase is required to submit to the Contest. All the Submissions will be reviewed by the Organizer’s editorial team to ensure they comply with the Contest Official Rules. Each Submission can be disqualified if it does not comply with the Contest Official Rules. Each Submission must be new, unpublished, original and written by the submitting Author and shall be written in English.

The submissions will close after 400 Qualifying Submissions are received.

The submission process is entirely electronic via the contest website.

No paper manuscripts will be accepted. The submission form is copy/paste format.

Specific Submission Conditions

• Submissions must revolve around the theme of "Motion".
• Submissions must not exceed 7,500 characters (including spaces).
• All genres (except erotica) are accepted, as long as they fit within the Short Fiction category.
• Submissions must be readable by audiences of all ages.

Multiple Submissions

Authors can only submit one Submission.

6. Rights granted on the Submissions

Subject to the acceptance of the story as a finalist, the author grants the right to Short Édition and BART to modify, edit, correct, translate, adapt, reproduce, distribute, and publish the submitted stories on the short-edition.com/en/contest/bart-lines-2022 website and in BART's Short Story Dispensers. BART also reserves the right to create and distribute a printed collection of the finalist short stories, which would be of a limited edition not to exceed 250, that BART would distribute at its discretion, and would be offered at a price not to exceed the cost of production. All finalist authors would be offered one copy at minimum at no cost to them. It is BART’s sole decision whether it will create this printed collection and may do so at any time. BART may also reproduce the finalist stories, and images that include finalist stories in whole or in part, for BART-related purposes including advertising of and for BART; educational, presentation and promotional materials; brochures, flyers, print, broadcast, film, electronic and multimedia publicity; and in BART social media and websites. BART shall ensure that such reproductions are made in a professional and tasteful manner, in its sole and reasonable judgement.

The author agrees that, in the above cases, no royalties or any other payment or remuneration is due in connection with publication with the BART Lines contest, either online or in print.

The copyright of the work shall remain with the author.

However, the Organizer reserves the right to contact the Author to enter into a long-form license contract for the publication of their Submission in the Short Story Dispensers around the world, outside of the Contest framework.

7. Author’s personal data

Submission of the registration details and any prize notification documents (hereinafter referred to as the “Entrant Data”) constitutes the Author’s consent given to the Organizer to obtain, use, and transfer the Author’s name, address and other details for Contest purposes. By accepting a prize, all finalists give their consent for the use of their names, biographical information, including city, state and country of residence, for promotional purposes (hereinafter referred to as the “Promotion”) by Organizer, and Sponsor, including but not limited to the posting of their names on the Organizer’s website, in a finalists list, without additional compensation, except where prohibited by law. Such Promotion shall be solely under control of the Organizer and Sponsor, and all finalists hereby waive any right on the Promotion contents as well as any possible claims of misuse of their names under contract, tort or any other theory of law.

8. Author’s warranties

The author declares that they are the sole author of any text they submit, and that this same text is an original creation. The author declares that they control the copyright of the submitted text, meaning that they have never transferred these rights to a third person/entity.

The Submissions shall not violate or infringe any rights (including but not limited to privacy rights, copyrights, trade secrets, confidential information, trademarks, or trade names). Submissions shall not defame, libel, or slander anyone or any entity. Submissions shall not contain or describe any excessively obscene, vulgar, offensive, profane, or provocative violence or sex scene. Submissions shall not contain derogatory, racist, or sexist language or situations. Submissions shall not contain plagiarism, which includes the use of third-party poetry, song lyrics, characters or another person’s universe, without written permission. Each Author is responsible and shall defend and hold the Organizer harmless from and against any infringement claim related to its Submission.

9. Applicable law – Disputes

This Contest and these Contest Official Rules are submitted to the laws of France. In the event of difficulty over the validity, interpretation or performance of these Contest Official Rules, the Author or the Organizer shall reach the other for an amicable dispute resolution. In case such amicable dispute resolution fails, or no solution is found within thirty (30) days from notification, the Author or the Organizer shall bring the dispute before the competent courts of France.