Redmond resident Corry Lee receives third place in L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Contest

Published 4:10 pm Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Corry Lee has been writing stories since she was in elementary school and last weekend the 30-year-old Redmond resident was honored for this lifelong passion, which she is working to turn into a career.

Lee was among 12 writers honored during the 28th Annual L. Ron Hubbard Achievement Awards at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Hollywood on Sunday. She was recognized after entering the L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Contest, a writing competition for new and amateur science fiction and fantasy writers of new short stories and novelettes.

The contest honors writers four times a year and Lee received third place for her short story “Shutdown,” a military science fiction story that takes place in the far future and features a ballerina heroine. She entered her short story in the contest in March 2011 and found out she had received third place two or three months after that.

“It was so amazing,” she said about the phone call she received.

Lee had just injured her back in a rock climbing accident at Marymoor Park and the news of her winning story was exactly what she needed as she faced what otherwise would have ben a bleak summer.

In addition to the award, she received a $500 cash prize and her story will be published in the L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 28, an annual anthology containing each year’s winners.

“This is my very first publication,” Lee said. “Now I have my name in a book. It’s amazing.”

The Writers of the Future contest was started by Hubbard in 1983 as a way for aspiring writers to get that much-needed break. Due to the success of the contest, the companion Illustrators of the Future Contest was created in 1988.

“The writers and illustrators of the future contests have proven to be the most effective means for contestants to make their break in the publishing industry, an industry renowned for being closed to the newcomer,” said contest director Joni Labaqui in a press release. “Well over six million fiction and non-fiction manuscripts make the rounds annually to find a publishing home, yet only 2,500 new science fiction and fantasy titles are published each year, and many of these are from already established authors. That’s why these contests were created — because it’s so hard to get published and there are so many talented people who give up on their dreams to see their works in print.”

This was exactly how Lee viewed the contest. She entered after hearing about it from other writers she’d met at various science fiction conventions she’d attended. She said they told her participating in the contest helped them launch their careers — some have had multiple novels published — and opened the science fiction and fantasy communities to them.

Lee has entered the contest a number of times, working her way up from honorable mention, to semifinalist to this year’s third place finish.

“It was a nice progression,” she said, adding it showed her that she was getting better.

She said the best advice she could give to anyone who wants to be a writer is to do just that — keep writing. She said this is the only way to get better.

Lee said science fiction and fantasy have always been the genres she favored — both as a writer and a reader — but leans more toward the former. She said she always enjoyed the sense of wonder and adventure in those stories and the interaction between humans and beings and things that are not “normal.”

Her love for science fiction is paired with a love for science fact as Lee studied physics and applied mathematics in college — all the while sneaking in writing time — and received a doctorate in experimental particle physics from Harvard University.

Lee said her academic background has helped her in her writing as she is more confident in writing about different technologies and characters with similar backgrounds as her.

“I think it’s helped me make the technology my characters interact with more realistic,” she said.

While the technical aspects of her writing benefits from her science background, Lee said her stories are more about people.

“I love exploring what makes people tick and what people love, what people fear … what they would do in a difficult situation,” she said. “I guess I like having imaginary friends.”

Lee became more serious about her writing after attending the intensive, six-week Odyssey Writing Workshop in the summer of 2009. She said this course as well as meeting other science fiction writers and conventions helped Lee realize it was possible for her to pursue her dream of being a writer.

Lee is currently working on a steampunk novel with the working title of “The Clockwork Empire.” She said steampunk is an up-and-coming genre that often deals with alternate history — usually during a time when steam power is widely used such as Victorian Britain.