Garrison Spik, a 41-year-old communications director and writer from Washington, D.C., is the winner of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a contest that began at San Jose State University in 1982. The competition is an international literary parody contest that honors the memory of writer Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton. Per the guidelines, contestants are asked to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. This year's winning entry did just that: “Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.'”