May | 2011 | Christopher Barzak

Today is the day. Welcome to Bordertown is officially out. And today is also the day to announce the winner of the Bordertown Lives pendant Mia Nutick has so graciously offered for my contest. And the winner is: Kathy Barreca.

If you haven’t taken a little dip into the contest entrant’s pool in my previous post, please do. ALL of them were great, but Kathy’s hooked me because of the magical device she used as her way to get to Bordertown: Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken. It was simple yet totally evocative, and I think poems are magical routes to other places. Sometimes into another person’s psychic landscape, and sometimes into more easily visited places.

But you should go read all of the entrants’ posts because they’re all good in so many different ways. One writer even has television writing credits in her background and didn’t enter to win, just to participate in a round of storytelling fun, which is totally a Bordertown thing to do. 🙂

Congratulations, Kathy. I’ll be getting you in touch with Mia shortly, and congratulations to all those readers who have been eagerly awaiting the new anthology, and congratulations to the editors and writers who all had the opportunity to work on bringing the place back for a spell.

After thirteen years of absence in the world, Bordertown–that awesome shared world of punk rock and elves that surfaced in the 80s and 90s–is coming back. It’s coming back on May 24th, to be exact, and those of us writer types who were invited to play in the new anthology have been holding contests leading up to the big event. And it is a big event. The book is big, and it’s beautiful, chock full of poems and stories and even a graphic story to boot. You won’t want to miss it.

For my contest, I’m asking readers of my blog to watch this book trailer for Welcome to Bordertown, and to maybe do a little research (for those who are unfamiliar with the Borderlands) to get acquainted with the place. Then, come back here and answer this one question in the comments of my blog:

How would you get to Bordertown?

It’s an important question, because Bordertown is a magical place, and all magical places have to be gotten to by particular paths. Wendy and Peter go to Neverland by flying on a celestial road called the High Way. Dorothy goes to the Emerald Kingdom by following the Yellow Brick Road. Alice tumbles down the Rabbit Hole to Wonderland. In Bordertown lore, it’s said that anyone wishing hard enough to be there will find a way. So what’s your way, if you wanted it bad enough? How would you get to Bordertown?

I’ll be picking one of the answers on May 24th, and will announce the winner here on my blog. The prize? This really cool Bordertown pendant fashioned by artist Mia Nutick: