Sen. Scofield to Present Kathryn Lang With 2012 SELTI Tourism Fiction Award. Invitation to all Alabama Writers to Focus on Tourism

Sen. Clay Scofield will present the 2012
SELTI Tourism Fiction Award.

Senator Clay Scofield, Chairman of the Alabama Senate Tourism and Marketing Committee, will present the 2012 SELTI Tourism Fiction Award to Kathryn Lang at the Moundville Native American Festival on October 10. Lang was selected for the award after her tourism short story "Digging Up Bones" won the Inaugural SELTI Writing Contest. Read her winning story by clicking Digging Up Bones. The story was set in Moundville and offers photos, links, and a short tourism guide to the archaeological park. Moundville was the perfect place to use as the setting for the contest, which was the first in the nation to challenge writers to compose stories designed to promote tourism to a real location. Many thanks again to the University of Alabama professors who helped judge the contest.

Native Americans will perform
traditional dances and arts at
the Moundville Native American
Festival, where the award
will be presented.

While presenting the award, Sen. Scofield will also invite all writers to use Alabama's many beautiful tourism attractions as settings for stories and novels with tourism guides. He will be the first elected official in the nation to make such an invitation. From scenic mountains to beautiful sunny beaches and resorts, Alabama offers many fun settings for novels just waiting for a story to be set in. A good place for interested writers to begin researching ideas would be the Alabama Tourism Department, which offers excellent guides to the state's many travel destinations.

I am excited to see where writers will go with tourism fiction in Alabama, in cities like Mobile, Birmingham, Hunstsville, and even smaller but beautiful storybook towns like Eufaula with it's annual Pilgrimage. I had a great time promoting the first interactive tourism novels, Blind Fate and Kirk Curnutt's Dixie Noir. Tourism fiction even applies to classic novels like F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise: Interactive Tourism Edition.

For more information on the upcoming 2012 SELTI Tourism Fiction Award, please visit the Media Release "A New Angle on Tourism" at the Marshall County Legislative Office. Please come visit the Moundville Native American Festival coming up in October.