"Hope is receiving a letter full of imagination and colorful dreams. Like pain, hope knows no age, race or gender. It is as immense as you want it to be. In fact, it is as universal as suffering; and it even reaches beyond pain."

So ends one of the texts written these days by PhD student Fátima Villa, promoter of the new short story contest that Tecnun has launched for the quarantine. The Biscayan returned from MIT a month ago and now, from her home, she combines her research work at department of Electrical and Electrical Engineering with writing short stories. She also enjoys painting and watching tutorials to help her improve her skills.

The doctoral student found that her love of writing was shared by the researcher of Ceit, David del Rio, and they decided to get down to work to organize this competition, which also has the collaboration of the communication service of Tecnun.

"We want to encourage people to share their reflections, so that together we can soak up the positive thoughts that we are surely having these days," says Villa. As the young engineer explains, the theme of the stories has to be related to the quarantine, and although "more gray reflections can also be shared and opt to award in the same way, we find it interesting that we strive to bring out the good side of the current status we are living, because the most beautiful thing about this project is that we spread optimism to each other," she says.

In addition, as expressed by the researcher of Ceit David del Rio, all those who wish to share the story with the elderly, can take advantage of their writing and send it to Matia Fundazioa, which has been sending anonymous letters to the elderly or people with functional diversity, groups especially affected by isolation.

Those interested in participating in this competition must send their story to relatoscortos.tecnun@gmail .com, with a copy to comunicacion@tecnun.es, before May 31 at 00.00h.

requirements of the works and prizes

The organizers clarify that the stories must be original, unpublished and not have been previously awarded in any other contest or competition.

Likewise, there are two contest modalities: stories in Basque and stories in Spanish. All the works will have a minimum length of 300 words and a maximum of 500.

The competition consists of two prizes for the works that the jury considers to have quality for publication: best story in Spanish and best story in Basque.

The winners of each category will receive a Lamy pen ( average -high range) courtesy of the stationery Tamayo of San Sebastian, and a voucher for a circuit in the thalassotherapy center La Perla de San Sebastian.

In addition, the jury may award honorable mentions to some stories that stand out for their quality. The award for these will be a Lamy pen (range average) for each of them.

For the evaluation of the works the jury will take into consideration the originality of the topic and the content and literary quality of the text. The evaluation will be carried out anonymously. The decision will be made public on Wednesday, June 15, 2020, and will be published on the website of Tecnun. In addition, the winners of both modalities will be contacted by email or telephone.

instructions from competition