Call for Submissions:2016 Etisalat Flash Fiction Award

How to enter

• The Prize is open to all writers of unpublished short stories (of African citizenship but can be resident anywhere in the world)
• All entries will be submitted online via the website and short stories submitted should not exceed 300 words
• Follow this link to apply: prize.etisalat.com.ng

The 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize: Entries Open 1st September 2016

The Prize is awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2,000–5,000 words) in English written by a citizen of a Commonwealth country.

Regional winners receive £2,500 and the overall winner receives £5,000.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: SMALL ISLAND ANTHOLOGY

Deadline Wednesday 5 October (11.59pm in any time zone)

We’re inviting writers from islands in the Commonwealth* to submit stories for a new anthology.

 The anthology will include poetry, short stories, and nonfiction – which can include creative non-fiction, memoir, and photo or narrative essays – from an island perspective. 

Return of The Guardian literary series

• Submission of articles begins

The 1980s was a momentous decade for Nigerian literature and one of the enabling factors for the literary effulgence of that era was the robustness of the critical enterprise woven around the literary productions.

The Guardian newspaper provided a significant platform for the critical engagement of writers, literary works and their raison d etre vis a vis literary trends which ended up evolving into a national literature. Through the famous, but now rested “The Guardian Literary Series”, the newspaper provided scholars and critics a formidable site for engaging Nigerian literature from different perspectives spanning from the oral tradition to contemporary writings.

 

CALL FOR WRITERS: ADDA

Call for Writers

Deadline: Monday 29 August (11.59pm in any time zone)

adda is Commonwealth Writers’ online gathering of stories, a place where writers and readers can talk to each other across global and geopolitical divides.

Call for Submissions: Lagos Theatre Festival Playwriting Competition

Our annual playwriting competition is seeking submissions from playwrights for plays to be produced at the Lagos Theatre Festival 2017 with the theme ‘Rhythm of the City’.  Lagos Theatre Festival (LTF) is the largest performing arts festival in Nigeria and indeed West Africa. It was created to promote theatre in unconventional spaces. Through the festival, theatre makers and producers are supported to expand their practice beyond traditional theatre spaces by creating work that responds to any given space. LTF has commissioned 8 plays since 2014 through similar playwriting competitions.

Call for Submissions: New Orleans Review

PRINT ISSUE

* The African Literary Hustle*

Guest Editors: Mukoma wa Ngugi and Laura Murphy

When African literature is published in the West, it is too often realist, in English, and always in the spirit of Chinua Achebe. But romance, science fiction, fantasy, epic, experimental poetry, satire, political allegory all find expression in Africa, though not necessarily publication. Those who are called to write often have to hustle to get recognition by writing a coming-of-age colonial encounter tale or hustle even harder to have their unique voices heard.

CALL FOR SUBMISSION: Ake Review 2016

Call for Submissions for Ake Review 2016

In anticipation of its 2016 edition, the Ake Arts and Book Festival is delighted to announce a call for entries for Ake Review, our annual journal. The theme for Ake Arts and Book Festival is BENEATH THIS SKIN. Centered on issues around identity, race and individuality, we desire work that engages these subjects.

CALL FOR SUBMISSION: NIYI OSUNDARE @70

Gardener of Words, Warrior of Lights: A Special Publication in Honour of Niyi Osundare

Niyi Osundare, internationally acclaimed and multiple award-winning Nigerian poet and essayist, was born on March 12, 1947. He was educated at the Universities of Ibadan, Leeds and York. His importance for African poetry, earlier noted in his Songs of the Marketplace and Village Voices, became more established with the publication of The Eye of the Earth, winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1986, the same year that Wole Soyinka became the first African winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Osundare is one of the most celebrated living Nigerian poets today, serving as poetry mentor, judge and motivator to individuals, institutions, literary groups and organisations all over the world. He taught for many years in Nigeria’s premier varsity, the University of Ibadan, where he served as Chair of the Department of English from 1993 to 1997. Osundare is currently Distinguished Professor of English, at the University of New Orleans, USA, and Honorary Professor-at-Large, University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

CALL FOR SPECIAL ISSUE PROPOSALS At the Crossroads of Art and Society: Niyi Osundare and Poetry in Nigeria

The seventieth birthday of Nigerian poet and professor of comparative literature, Niyi Osundare, invites deeper reflection on the poet-scholar’s life and contributions to literary cultures in Nigeria and the world generally. Although a number of significant studies have emerged in the past few years to study Osundare’s poetry within a range of contextual, thematic and stylistic conventions, particularly focusing on the “accessibility” of his verses and his political commitments as a poet, there still remain significant gaps and scantiness in focused appreciation of Osundare’s poetic oeuvre. His contributions to the “language” of “Nigerian poetry,” to socio-political criticism of the postcolony as well as his consistent agitation for committed ethical disposition towards the environment cannot be overstated. This special issue hopes to address some of these gaps by bringing into discussion intersections of ideas of humanism, community, environment, economics and the cosmopolitan space in the poetry of Osundare.