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"They represent two very different takes on the prompt, but each is marvelously dramatic and packs an unbelievable amount of characterization and suspense into the three-minute word allotment," Russell says.

In the end, there is only one winner: Ben Jahn for his submission, Reborn.

"Ben Jahn's use of language, the specificity of his details, just blew me away. It was indelible and unforgettable and really chilling," Russell says.

Jahn's story is set at the "Reborn Convention," where adults shop in the "high fluorescence of toyland" for baby dolls. A "sky blue onesie" catches the eye of the male narrator. Jahn had been researching doll shopping for a novel he's writing. "There's something inherently creepy about dolls, to me anyway," says Jahn, who grew up with four sisters.

Jahn, of Richmond, Calif., is an English teacher. He says his earliest inspiration came from his father, who was not a writer but tried to win a chainsaw by writing a radio jingle.

"I loved watching him toil over language. I didn't know people wrote and tried to achieve something in writing," he says. "I liked the effect it had on me, and decided I wanted to try to do that for others."

About Round 11

Round 11 Official Rules

In 1993, a freighter ran aground off Queens, N.Y. The Golden Venture had nearly 300 people on it who were being smuggled into the U.S. from China.

Passengers cited China's forced-sterilization program and governmental persecution from political expression as reasons to climb aboard the Golden Venture. Some paid the smugglers $30,000 to board the ship. An organized crime syndicate would front the money, and the passengers would have to work off the debt, often in restaurants like indentured servants.

Some people jumped from the ship, trying to swim ashore. Ten people drowned, while about 200 people were treated for exhaustion and exposure. Shengqiao Chen was among 110 people smuggled in the ship who were detained in U.S. prisons while they waited for political asylum.

'This Is United States'

"After three months, we finally see the land," 38-year-old Chen told Zehao Zhou during a recent visit to StoryCorps in Philadelphia. "They told us, 'This is United States.' "

The two men met while Chen was in prison. Zhou, an academic librarian at York College in Pennsylvania, was his translator. At StoryCorps, Zhou asked Chen how long he swam that day.

"You can't really swim. The waves move you back, and I passed out," Chen said. "And then a couple of my friends carried me out of the water.

"When I woke up, I was in the hospital," Chen said. "I had my hand handcuffed on the bed."

Shrines And Letters

Chen was sent to a detention center in Pennsylvania.

"I think the most difficult time is after six months, and you don't know what your future is going to be," he said.

Chen's mother thought he was dead and had set up a family shrine for him.

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In the past several days, there's been a steady flow of leaks about the National Security Agency and its secret surveillance activities, including the gathering of meta-data on domestic and foreign telephone calls and the existence of PRISM, described in media reports as a top-secret data-mining program.

New developments are occurring on a daily basis. Here are a few we're watching right now:

— A spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence has requested that a criminal probe be opened into leaks of classified material about secret surveillance programs, according to Reuters. A spokesman for DNI, Shawn Turner, tells the news agency that a "crimes report has been filed" by the National Security Agency with the Department of Justice.

— Shortly after Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a statement Saturday denouncing the news media for 'reckless' and inaccurate reporting on the secret intelligence gathering activities and defending their legality, Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague made similar remarks in an interview with the BBC.

Hague, referring to reports that the British government was working hand-in-hand with the U.S. and its alleged data-mining activities, said the two countries indeed shared intelligence. However:

"The idea that in GCHQ people are sitting around working out how to circumvent a U.K. law with another agency in another country is fanciful," he said, referring to Britain's equivalent of the NSA. "It is nonsense".

— Some in Australia and New Zealand are wondering to what extent their governments might be cooperating with Washington's surveillance activities. Reuters reports that Canberra and Wellington are facing "awkward questions" from lawmakers.

— On Saturday, The Guardian, in the latest of its reports on the surveillance activities, claims to have revealed the existence of a secret data-cataloging tool called Boundless Informant, which the newspaper says can produce a sort country-by-country "heat map" detailing the "voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks."

On whether Scheherazade was always viewed as a heroine

"No, not at all. All of us, especially educated Arab women, would say, 'No, do you think I am Scheherazade? A slave sitting and telling you stories so you won't kill me?' This is how we thought about Scheherazade at the beginning. One Thousand and One Nights ... wasn't looked at as ... Arabic literary heritage. People thought it was vulgar; they thought it was very bad literature — it's not literature, it's folk tales and nothing else. But then everything changed."

On why sexuality is so essential to One Thousand and One Nights

"People at that time didn't think, 'Oh, this is forbidden. We shouldn't be talking about sexuality.' We should be talking about all aspects of life, and one aspect of life is sexuality. ...

"I'd like every single Arab to read One Thousand and One Nights. They [would] learn a lot from them, especially [because] these stories were written away from the influence of religion. It's interesting to see how we were open, how we had a dialogue with each other, how we wanted to understand, how we respected each other. There was a great dignity, and I'd like this to be restored again."

Read an excerpt of One Thousand And One Nights