Photo by Adrian Kinloch

Next week, we close out Significant Objects Volume 2, our cycle of 50 stories and auctions, with proceeds going to 826 National.

And to go out with a bang, we have an extraordinary team-up to announce: We’ve joined forces with Underwater New York to bring you five stories about things found on the beach of Dead Horse Bay, Brooklyn. (Update: Check the stories published so far by following this link.)

The writing crew? Chris Adrian, Deb Olin Unferth, Kathryn Davis, Robert Lopez, and Tom McCarthy. The objects? You’re already looking at some of them, but more after the jump.

Photo by Adrian Kinloch

And the extra-special bonus? As always, we’ll send the winning bidder a printout of the Object’s story — but each story in this collaboration will arrive rolled up in an awesome bottle also found on the Dead Horse Bay beach! Each bottle is unique of course, but see above for an example. This is definitely a two-objects-for-the-price-of-one situation.

The packaging for stories shipped in our UNY collab.

If you don’t know about Underwater New York, here’s the deal. It’s an online anthology of art, stories, and music inspired by underwater objects. It came to be after Nicki Pombier Berger read an article by Chris Bonanos in New York Magazine listing a couple dozen strange findings under the waters around New York City. She sent the list around to some writer friends as a story prompt, and what began as a fun summer writing project grew when more and more people showed interest in the idea. Helen Georgas and Nicole Haroutunian got on board as editors, and when the group connected with Adrian Kinloch, designer and photographer extraordinaire, together they built UnderwaterNewYork.com.

There’s an evocative landscape under New Yorks’s waters, littered with castaway surprises that just beg for stories. The list of objects in UNY’s creativity-inspiring collection continues to grow today, with the findings of divers and sea captains, detectives and engineers, environmentalists — and everyday city-dwellers like team UNY. It was on a recent excursion to Dead Horse Bay, a cove in Brooklyn strewn with debris from the early 20th century, that Nicki, Nicole and Helen found a crop of once-underwater doodads that seem ripe for Significance.

You can imagine why we were excited to join forces with them!

Among other things, teaming with Underwater New York means that for the first time, we have writers inventing stories about found objects: stuff that wasn’t just given a low value by the traditional marketplace, but that was given no value at all. It’s literally stuff that washed up on the beach.

But clearly, it’s very cool stuff. And we’re confident you’ll agree that the stories we publish next will transform these previously-overlooked things into genuine Significant Objects.

Who is writing about what? What are the stories like? Come back Monday to find out. It’s our  final week of auctions to raise money for 826 National. We hope you agree, this is a great conclusion.