Yesterday I popped into the english department’s 4th floor grad-student-only computer lab, slightly winded (as usual), in a hurry (as usual). One of my colleagues turned from her monitor, crisp and awake.

“You heard about this Amazon first novel contest?” she asked. I hadn’t. “Due November 5,” she said.

“There’s not enough cocaine in the world to get me to finish my novel in 5 weeks,” I said.

“$25,000,” she said. “And a contract with Penguin.”

“Oh,” I said. “Maybe there is.”

While $25,000 may not be a windfall, it sure does sound like a decent-sized check for a first time novelist, particularly to grad student writers of literary fiction. Not that literary fiction will take the prize in this contest — maybe Penguin will find memoir or chicklittiness a better risk — but it is nice to think so.

The trouble I see with the contest is that it’s first-come, first-entered — they’ll consider only the first 5,000 submissions. Which means that anyone who’s got a crappy old novel sitting around electronically has a better shot than a budding writer who’s got something they’re working on that they might be able to get into shape by November 5. There had to be at least 5,000 would-be novelist devotees of Miss Snark; too many were writing about mythic vampyr queens.

This doesn’t bother me — somebody’s got to read the entries. (I would have tried to recruit Miss Snark out of retirement, myself).

I’ve got a lovely hardcover copy of Min Jin Lee’s debut novel Free Food for Millionaires waiting for you. The book chronicles Korean-American Casey Han after she’s graduated from Princeton. Casey is the child of working-class parents in Queens but she’s surrounded by people who can carelessly summer in Italy. As in a 19th-century novel, many of these characters come alive, creating a shifting, expanding universe with Casey at its center. Carol Memmott writes in USA Today:

Not since Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake has an author so exquisitely evoked what it’s like to be an immigrant…As much as this is an immigrant story, it’s also an American story full of class struggle, rugged individualism, social status and above all, the money haves and have-nots. Most of all it’s an epic mediation on love, both familial and romantic. Lee offers us love in all its tenacious and painful glory.

To win the book, send an email to paperhaus (a) gmail.com and tell me about one of the richest people you’ve met. Please include your mailing address. The winner’s tale — if you like — will be posted here.

The Burnside Review of Portland, Oregon is having its first fiction contest. The judge? Glen David Gold, author of Carter Beats the Devil. Entries are due 12/31. Whaddaya get? Bound print copies, $200, and bragging rights.