University of Wisconsin Oshkosh assistant professor Sue Fondrie has written the worst sentence of 2011, winning the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with the world’s worst opening to an imaginary novel.

Here is the winning (?) sentence: “Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.”

This prize is part of an annual bad writing competition that began in 1982 at San Jose State University. The contest was named after Victorian novelist Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton (pictured, via), an author famous for writing the opening line: “It was a dark and stormy night.”