The first contest's categories were limited to articles, fiction and children's stories, and the contest itself was limited to the Untied States. Now in its 30th year, the contest has expanded to an international contest and now includes categories for poetry, humor and personal essays.
Mona was born in Los Angeles and performed in radio in New York as a child; and as an adult, onstage, including the Antrim Playhouse in Suffern, where Mona had the thrill of having Helen Hayes come backstage one night and complement her on her lead performance in William Inge's COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA. Mona had her own early interest in writing piqued when she interviewed
the great actor Boris Karloff for her Harlem, NYC high school yearbook. She and her husband Andrew, d were co-presidents of the PTA for Chestnut Grove Elementary School in New City, New York. There,
Mona taught drama classes and Andrew taught art on the weekends to young students, and recycled the money back into the school.
This community involvement with the arts also had its later effect on the founding of the Foster City. Writer's Contest. Mona, who also belonged to Cupertino Writers and the California Writers Club, introduced Foster City students to accomplished writers such as childrens' book author Mabel Watts and romance novelist Phyllis Taylor Pianka. Mona attended Columbia University and San Francisco State University.
Mona passed away on June 30, 1985, due to complications from large cell lung cancer. She is buried in Skylawn Memorial Park in Half Moon Bay, California. On her headstone are her own words,
delivered near the end of her time here: It's the quality of life, not the quantity, that matters. To preserve her memory and her vision, Brad founded the Mona Schreiber Prize for Humorous Fiction and
Nonfiction in 2000, an international prize at www.brashcyber.com. He has also included her work and refers to her influence in his fourth book, entitled What Are You Laughing At?: How to Write Funny
Screenplays, Stories and More, published in December 2003 from Michael Wiese Productions
Another individual who was most important in helping to solidify the long term success of this contest was Ted Lance. Ted noted that it had begun to achieve a national scope when he began to administer the contest in the mid 1970s. Also, by that time, members of the Peninsula Press Club, in representing their staff, had volunteered to act as anonymous judges for the contests.
Ted mentioned that even during this time when submissions were to have all been in English, one was received from Israel. The writer had not included the (then) $5 fee, with the amount actually included in the form of Israeli stamps. Since no one with the city was interested in starting a stamp collection, Ted just submitted the fee himself and kept the stamps.
Ted faithfully served as the coordinator for the contest and chaired the annual Year End Awards Ceremony for over two decades right through the January, 2001 Awards Ceremony while providing consistent and strong leadership throughout those many years. Tragically, that was the last one Ted chaired as he passed away later that same year.
Both Mona and Ted continue to be honored as the two primary individuals responsible for the establishment and long running legacy of the Foster City International Writer's Contest.
Of course over the years, changes have been made in the offered categories. Poetry was divided into rhymed verse and blank verse. The non-fiction category, which had hoped to capture articles such as one might find in the Readers Digest, was eventually dropped to suit the judges who found they were trying to judge completely different categories of non-fiction.
More recently the Writer's Contest was reformatted to include five categories. The original fiction and children's stories categories remained while blank verse and rhymed verse were combined to create the poetry category. The humor and personal essay categories were combined shortly as one new category for a short time, but were then brought back each as its own category.
Since 2008 the contest has been administered by a Contest Planning team under the auspices of the Foster City Parks and Recreation Department. Eileen Shaine, long term Foster City resident, serves as the Chairperson.