2015 Marks 75th Anniversary for L. Ron Hubbard’s Golden Pen Award

2015 Marks 75^th Anniversary for L. Ron Hubbard’s Golden Pen Award

Author Services, Inc. is celebrating the 75^th Anniversary of the Golden Pen Award, conceived by author and explorer L. Ron Hubbard in 1940 while on his Alaskan Radio Experimental Expedition flying Explorers Club flag #105 to Ketchikan, AK.  The Golden Pen Award was the prize for top story submissions sent to him at the KGBU radio station (now renamed as KTKN).

As part of the celebration, a special live performance of “The Chee-Chalker,” (translated as “The Newcomer”)  mystery thriller located in Ketchikan and written by Hubbard following his Alaskan stay, will be broadcast live from KTKN and will feature the First City Players, a theatrical troupe in Ketchikan.

The “Golden Pen Award” followed an already established pattern of providing guidance to new writers, a series of “how to” articles published in a number of writing magazines in the 1930s.  As a feature of his radio program, called the “Mail Buoy,” he additionally offered advice for beginning writers and went one step further, initiating the “Golden Pen Award” contest to encourage listeners to write fiction, with prizes awarded by Hubbard, including an introduction to his New York publishing contacts.

In 1983, as a continuation of a legacy of helping the aspiring artist and in recognition of the increasingly difficult path encountered between first manuscript and published work, particularly in an era in which publishers devote the lion’s share of their promotional budgets to a few household names, Hubbard “initiated a means for new and budding writers to have a chance for their creative efforts to be seen and acknowledged.” He created the Writers of the Future Contest and, over three decades later it has become the most prestigious contest of its kind in providing that much needed open door for fledgling artists.

For more information about the Contest, go to www.writersofthefuture.com.

For more information on the upcoming theatrical production at KTKN radio in Ketchikan, go to www.facebook.com/LRonHubbardTheatre.