A winner has been crowned in the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (the "Lyttoniad"), held by the the English Department of San Jose State University. The contest seeks to find the very worst possiible opening sentence for a novel, although the novel itself doesn't exist. The winning sentence was submitted by Kat Russo of Loveland, Colorado.
The elven city of Losstii faced towering sea cliffs and abutted rolling hills that in the summer were covered with blankets of flowers and in the winter were covered with blankets, because the elves wanted to keep the flowers warm and didn’t know much at all about gardening.
The contest, running 35 years now, was named in honor of Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, who in 1830 began a novel with the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night" which has been parodied endlessly ever since. Read about the contest, and see the entries from runners-up, honorable mentions, and winners in such categories as children's literature, crime/detective, historical fiction, and more. -via Metafilter
See also: Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winners in previous years.