April 2026 Bamboo Writing Contest Prompt

Aloha and a very Happy April to you all.  I hope the Easter Bunny brought you everything you wanted.  For the past 65 years or so, I wake up every Easter morning hoping that the Easter Bunny has brought me the baskets he used to leave for me when I was younger.  Sadly, I never find anything.  Same again this Easter.  I guess I must be on his permanent naughty list for some reason.  Ah well, there’s always the possibility of next year.

Anyway, enough about nostalgia and sorrow.  On to the prompt for April — which, of course, you may choose to ignore and write about anything you wish.

Here are the prompts.

I just came back from another trip to NYC.  This time, in addition to plays and jazz music nights, I was able to fulfill one of the last items on my bucket list.  When I retired, the list was long.  Now it is very short, and just got shorter.

A young man from Honolulu — now a world-renowned opera baritone — gave his final performance of the season at The Metropolitan Opera.  Quinn Kelsey, a 1996 University Laboratory School graduate, has risen to the top of the opera world, and I’ve always wanted to see him at The Met.

So, I bought a ticket to see him in that final performance of Madama Butterfly.  It was wonderful to see/hear him.  His voice can definitely fill that space.  Stunning.

I’d told Quinn, from the time he began studying voice at U.H. Mānoa, that when he debuted at The Met, I would fly over to see him.  Unfortunately, when that day arrived in 2008, I was unable to go due to family circumstances.  I remember when I sent him that message how he responded with a message telling me he understood, and that “Family always comes first.”

I have two prompts for this month:

Family comes first
Fulfilling items on your bucket list

As always, you can write a poem, a story, a play, an essay, or any hybrid you come up with.

Everybody set?  Let’s write.

By participating in the Bamboo Shoots community, you agree to the following rules:

1. We reserve the right to remove content that promotes hate or gratuitous violence. Be respectful and courteous to others.
2. All contest challenge entries must be submitted by the designated
3. Enter as many times as you like using a trigger/prompt (this page).
4. Contest Challenge entries can be prose (including short stories, nonfiction essays, or whatever you write), poetry, or plays -- or any type of hybrid writing you dream up.
5. Every entry must have a title -- unless you choose to enter a haiku, in which case you can simply enter the word haiku in the title section.
6. All content/entries should be original work. You retain ownership of your entries; however, we may ask to use them elsewhere on the site or on social media to help promote Bamboo Ridge and/or the Bamboo Shoots online writing community.
7. Winners will be announced with all possible speed after the end of each month. Winners receive 10 Bamboo Bucks credit to spend in the BRP online bookstore. Bamboo Bucks have no monetary value outside of the online store.
8. Entries may also be selected for publication in the regular Bamboo Ridge Journal. If your piece is chosen, the editors will contact you via the email address on file.
9. Please note that you need not enter the contest challenge in order to post on Bamboo Shoots. You may post other writing if you choose. We welcome that here:  Click this link to go to Shoot da Breeze.