Looks like you might have an official outlet for your NaNoWriMo book this year. (If you're not in the know, that's "National Novel Writing Month," the popular annual program where folks commit the entire month of November to writing a book from start to finish.) D.C. will be the breeding ground for the winner of this year's Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award, issued every year to a poet or fiction writer in a different state, by the Poets & Writers organization. Via City Desk, who notes that previous award winners include actual big shot writers like Mona Simpson and Sue Monk Kidd.

Prepare your manuscript to meet the December 1, 2007 deadline, and you might come away with not only a prestigious award to hang on the wall, but $500, an all expenses-paid trip to New York City to hob-nob with writer and publisher types, and an optional trip to get away from it all at a one-month Wyoming writer's retreat.

Read the Egan Award guidelines here, which most importantly require that you either have never had a book published, or have had only one book published in the genre in which you're applying. Every applicant must have resided in Washington, D.C. for the last two years. How many of you will take advantage of the opportunity to become the next George Pelecanos?

Photo by IntangibleArts