BBC Africa Spotlights Emi Mahmoud’s Poem on the War in Sudan.In the BBC Africa interview, Mahmoud notes that she has lost seven of her family members in the conflict in Sudan over the past year. Last week alone, she lost four more. She remarks, “This is one of the biggest wars and crises of our times and it’s going completely unnoticed.”
The Quramo Writers’ Prize is only open to unpublished Nigerian and African writers living within and outside the continent. An “African writer” is taken to mean someone who is a national of an African country, with a parent who is African by birth or nationality. The fiction prose manuscript must be the original, unpublished work of the entrant and in English. Published work is not eligible for the prize. Short story collections, plays, and poetry are not eligible. Manuscripts must contain a minimum of 30,000 words. All entrants must be 16 years of age and above. All entries must be…
Global Black Women’s Non-Fiction Manuscript Prize
Olayinka Yaqub Wins the 2023 Awele Creative Trust Award
In our continuing series, we share opportunities for those who wish to submit work be it poetry, prose, or other related arts in May 2024. These callouts are divided into education (MFAs, Fellowships, residencies), opportunity hubs, journals, and prizes. If you have any callouts, please share in the comments. Education (MFAs, Fellowships, residencies). Opportunity hubs Literary magazines/journals/anthologies/manuscripts Publishers Prizes and competitions
This event signifies a renewed interest in the spoken word and demonstrates the transformative potential of poetry in the digital age.
Call for Participation: Pa Gya! A Literary Festival in Accra 2024 Pa Gya! A Literary Festival, Ghana’s premier celebration of literary arts, returns for another immersive three-day journey into the world of stories, creativity, and cultural exchange. This dynamic festival brings together book readings, launches, engaging talks, captivating performances, theatre showcases, exhibitions, a vibrant book market, and much more. Over the years, Pa Gya! has fostered meaningful collaborations with writers, publishers, academics, artists, and cultural institutions from across Africa, Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, and North America. Its rich tapestry of events and participants highlights the festival’s mission to be a…
Judges praised the ‘imaginative capacity and technical flair’ of a collection that draws connections between Shakespeare’s hero and today’s immigrants Jamaican poet Jason Allen-Paisant has won this year’s TS Eliot prize for Self-Portrait As Othello, his collection exploring Black masculinity and immigrant identity. Allen-Paisant was announced as the winner of the £25,000 award during a ceremony at the Wallace Collection in London. “Self-Portrait As Othello is a book with large ambitions that are met with great imaginative capacity, freshness and technical flair,” said the judging panel, made up of the poets Paul Muldoon, Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul. The best…
Lagos – The MTN Foundation, in partnership with Beeta Universal Arts Foundation, recently hosted the much-anticipated finale of the 6th Beeta Playwright Competition, spotlighting Nigeria’s next generation of playwrights. The event saw the top ten finalists compete for the prestigious award, providing an exciting opportunity for new literary voices to shine. In a notable departure from previous editions, this year’s competition featured 40 selected candidates, expanding its scope and opening doors for more emerging talents to showcase their craft. The competition aims to empower playwrights to bring to the stage compelling, authentic Nigerian stories that reflect the richness of local…
Taiwo Michael Oloyede Olukorede Yishau’s After the End is a searing extrapolation of the conundrums of human existence, where the intimate struggles of its characters mirror the unrelenting chaos of the cities they inhabit. From the sprawling bustle of Lagos to the foggy alienation of Liverpool and London, the novel reveals how geography shapes and intensifies the private battles of individuals navigating grief, betrayal, and the quest for redemption. The trauma of Yishau’s characters is not isolated; it is a reflection of the restless, contradictory spaces they call home, spaces where personal pain is magnified against a backdrop of societal…
