adminThe Intwasa Short Story Competition is an annual literary event seeking to promote original creative writing talent in English and SiNdebele. The competition has two awards; the Yvonne Vera Award for best short story in English and the Ndabezinhle Sigogo Award for best short story in SiNdebele. The prize for each is $500.
With only 10 days to go before the deadline on 31 July, half of the scripts are from Harare and the rest are from South Africa and the Diaspora.
In an interview on Thursday, festival’s director, Raisedon Baya, described the situation as disappointing saying the same thing happened last year.
He said they had named the award after prominent writer the late Vera so as to give inspiration to up-and-coming writers.
“Our idea was to honour Dr Vera with naming the award after her as she was a top class writer. This was also to give inspiration to the budding writers from the region to emulate her exploits,” said Baya.
“Over the past years no entries from Matabeleland North and South have been received and the situation is the same this year.”
He said the writing competition was an opportunity for writers to provoke thought in readers and get fresh ideas.
“The writing competition is to get fresh thought-provoking writers to inspire readers. It is very unfortunate that we are so close to the closing date and there has been little number of writers from the host of the festival,” said Baya.
He said the competition was open to all writers who could explore their writing prowess as there was no given topic.
“They can submit their stories with a maximum of 3000 words in which ever topic they want. This is to ensure that they explore their writing prowess without any boundaries of a topic,” said Baya.
Turning to a workshop organised by the Zimbabwe Writers Association (ZWRA) that will be held today at the National Art Gallery, Baya, the regional facilitator, said it was an opportunity for writers to come together to discuss challenges they are facing.
“I am not personally part of an organisation or association of writers but this will be opportunity to discuss the challenges we face. The ZWRA was formed in Harare and is going around the major cities in the country to speak to writers,” said Baya.
He said the workshop would start at 9am.
Online Reporter