Pen New Voices Award 2013

Write And Win $1000.00, One Year Mentorship Plus Other Chances From PEN NIGERIA

Nigerian PEN Centre is calling for entries in prose and poetry in order to short list a male and female writer in the age bracket of 18-30 years old to represent the centre in the PEN  INTERNATIONAL/NEW VOICES AWARD 2013.

Eligibility in the Nigerian short list process is based on the exact rules of the international competition as stated below. Contestants should thus note that the ultimate prize money is accessible only after scaling the Nigerian hurdle.

PEN International has set up an annual New Voices Award to encourage new writing in the countries in which we operate and to provide a much needed space for young and unpublished writers to submit their work. The award will actively encourage entries from diverse linguistic regions and communities.  Before PEN International was established in 1921, its founder, Catharine Amy Dawson Scott, set up the Tomorrow Club as a space for aspiring writers to network with more established writers. In 1928, Herman Ould, International Secretary, felt strongly that it was important for PEN to maintain focus on helping emerging writers, and so established a ‘Young PEN’ chapter.

The PEN International/New Voices Award builds on these ideas, simultaneously reconnecting with our past and moving into the future. 

PEN/NEW VOICES AWARD: AIMS 

The first annual PEN International/New Voices Award aims to: 

- encourage writers aged 18-30 to write short stories, creative non-fiction, journalism, and poetry;

- to promote freedom of expression, literature, and the tenets of the PEN Charter; 

- foster new forms of writing appropriate to our time;

- promote translation, especially into ‘bridge’ languages such as English, French, and 

Spanish; 

- provide a (much needed) space for emerging writers to submit their work; 

- help emerging writers by providing advice on how best to work towards a career as a writer; 

- to cement PEN’s profile as the world’s oldest and pre-eminent writers’ organisation

PEN INTERNATIONAL/NEW VOICES AWARD: STRUCTURE 

Details of the award’s terms of entry and judging structure are set out below: 

1) TERMS OF ENTRY 

- all candidates must be over 17 & still under the age of 30 at the time of the closing date; 

- writers who have published books may not enter but those who have existing contracts with publishers for forthcoming books may enter; 

- writers who have published pamphlets work in magazines and journals are allowed to enter; 

- prose entries must be between 2,000-4,000 words;

- poetry entries may take the form of individual poems, a sequence, or one long poem of no more than 2,500 words in total; 

- writers may only submit one prose work; 

- a long list of six writers will receive feedback on their entries from distinguished experts;

- Two winning writers, a male and a female would have their entries sent to PEN International as Nigeria’s entry that might stand a chance of winning the ultimate prize money

-The winning entries would be translated into English, French, Spanish and one or two Nigerian Languages

- there will be no entry fee

2) JUDGING THE AWARD 

- the award will be open to submissions from March 15th to May 15th, 2013; 

- the submission window will close 12 midnight on 15 May 2013 and no late entries will be considered; 

- our team of judges will offer online mentorship for a short list of six for not more than one year after the competition

3) GUIDELINES

- amendments cannot be made to entries after they have been submitted, nor substitutions made;

- poems to be single-spaced and a line count noted at the top of the first page;

- short stories to be double-spaced and a word count noted at the top of the first page;

- the filename of online entries must be the title of the entry and it must be either a .doc, .docx, .rtf, .wps, .pdf or .txt file;

- all entries are judged anonymously: do not include the entrant’s name on the document, only on the application sheet;

- worldwide copyright of each entry remains with the author, but PEN International will have the unrestricted right to publish entries in the e-anthology, in print, on the website, and in any relevant promotional material;

- the judges' decision is final and no individual correspondence can be entered into;

To enter send your entry with subject as PEN NEW VOICES 2013 to Secretary General, Nigeria Pen Centre, Ropo Ewenla: firo_po@yahoo.co.uk.

PEN International celebrates literature and promotes freedom of expression. Founded in 1921, our global community of writers now comprises 146 Centres spanning more than 100 countries. Our programmes, campaigns, events and publications connect writers and readers for global solidarity and co-operation. PEN International is a non-political organisation and holds consultative status at the United Nations and UNESCO. www.pen-international.org.

Favourite Five: Betty Abah

Betty Abah is a Nigerian poet, journalist and environmentalist. She worked previously with TELL and Newswatch Magazine and had a stint with the Rocky Mountain News in Colorado, USA as an Alfred Friendly Fellow in 2006. Currently, she works with the Environmental Rights Action, an environmental justice NGO.

She obtained a Bachelors degree in English and Literary Studies from the University of Calabar and a Masters in English Literature from the University of Lagos. She is a recipient of several national and international writing awards and fellowships. They include NYSC State Honours Award (Ogun State, 2001), the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship (a six-month reporting media fellowship in the USA), John Knight Health Reporting Fellowship, Kaiser Foundation HIV/AIDS Fellowship, the Nigeria Media Merit Awards (NMMA), the Diamond Awards for Media Excellence (DAME). She is also a fellow of the Global Tobacco Control Leadership Program, John Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA among other.

Abah is the author of two books of poetry, Sound of Broken Chains and the award-winning Go Tell Our King; she has published widely both in local and international publications. She is married to John Abah.

She had this to say about her list: "Narrowing down my list of favourite books to five is almost like narrowing down my educational history to five years. I have been reading for as long as I can remember and my reading train is lengthy and unaccountable, at the risk of ditching humility! But I will try to do five, relatively recent that have greatly delighted me."

Nine Lives by El-Nukoya
Why is it number one on my list? Well, this was one book that put me under a 24-hour spell and at the end made me cry. The word ‘incredible’ was crafted for this book. A story of love, racy crime and the equally racy quest for revenge; it simply blows you away page by page. I read on, gasp and wonder; ‘And this, by a Nigerian?! My God!’ It is a book everyone should read—the lyricism, the power of description, and even more, the suspense! Even if the author’s storyline--of how the protagonist became a mega millionaire, from a mere poor boy from the back waters of a Southern Nigerian locale, to how he hit it big by flirting then blackmailing an American billionaire’s wife--doesn’t sit well on your moral anchor, you feel helpless with the sheer appeal of this book, the spell-binding storyline. I feel that El-Nukoya, the reclusive author of this great book has yet to receive the deserved praise for this classic. I hope to go back and read it all over again! 

Slumdog Millionaire by  Vikas Swarup
This is one book I have kept as a treasure and from time to time, go check my shelf to be sure it is still there, for I must read it again. Dark humour, sheer creativity, sheer brilliance! This is the story of a young, urban poor boy who hit it big assisted by fate’s crafty hands.  Formerly known as Q & A (2005), it tells the story of Jamal Malik, a young man from the slums of Mumbai who appears on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The book has been criticised for its romanticisation of poverty particularly in India where it is set. Perhaps the author’s greatest strength lies in his creative insight--and portrayal of--acrid poverty so vividly, evoking strong emotions, in fact, humour and pathos almost simultaneously  his own elitist background. It is the book that the world could never have ignored. It is a masterpiece and I sincerely envy the writer. I hope to be able to write this ‘sweetly’ someday.

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin
This book is one whose humour, especially the sardonic humour, will follow you long after you have read it. I have had to ask the author, during our two meetings about the bold ‘sex appeal’ of the novel. Yet, ours is an ‘explicit’ world and so she may be on point. The issue of male infertility, in fact all infertility, is a delicate one but Shoneyin decides to take this literary bull by its pretentious horns. Her dexterous probe into the characters’ lives albeit, mostly, tongue-in-cheek, deserves commendation. Though the author has said she loves Baba Segi, the reader is free to make his/her pick of the  characters woven together by fate and whose native wisdom fetches them relief, even if temporary, amidst a helpless situation. In the end, my heart is with the ‘unknown’ men who father children they know they fathered but would never be father to. An agracha of a book. Lovely! Any wonder it made the Finalist of the Orange Prize?

The Whispering Trees by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
I love Adam’s book! Why? Its sweetness is much more than that of an apple! This collection of short stories is one book I read and quickly, breathlessly, leaved through the next few pages to be sure the story wouldn’t end too soon. Many of the stories did and I nearly wept! Why wouldn’t you, if a book reduces you to a mere panting baby and its stories are like the spicy Northern suya or kilinshi? You are eating it, one spicy bite after the other and it finishes abruptly, you would likewise cry, or at least feel tormented. Earthy characters, unearthly circumstances. Wit, wit, sheer wit. Local colours, and the flavour, oh, the flavour!  Abubakar mischievously toys with the tender threads of his readers’ hearts, which isn’t fair, though nothing is even fair in the fairy world of enchanted butterflies, witches, ghosts and wicked fate he weaves around our imagination. Beautiful book from a well-cooked mind. And, I must’t forget, a great service to the Hausa language, just as Achebe and Chimamanda have done for the Ibo language. I envy them. I hope I can do that with my Idoma language when the muse lets loose prose butterflies over me. I love Adam’s book; the pages drip with honey, sweeter than apples. Surely, Abubakar is one budding Nigerian writer roaring to take the literary world by its jugulars! Sweet, sweet book. 

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
I shall break protocol to write about Three Cups of Tea. I shall remain tormented by literary conscience if I omit it. Though this large book is non-fiction, its style, the ambience and particularly the power of description, is simply unbelievable. Several times I gasped at a sentence, went over it five times like someone memorizing a Bible verse. In one rare moment of self-defeatism, I admitted I may never be able to write this well, after all, I am not even a native writer! What do you call a book that astounds your mind so much you feel like leaking the pages, or  you had to rush out to call the attention of family members to sentences--like when he described a Pakistani boy as an ‘apparition’? The book is about the exploits of  Greg Mortenson, an American mountaineer who lost his way in Pakistan on a tragic expedition to K-2, the world’s second highest mountain, stumbled on a remote village, an occurrence which triggered an educational humanitarian venture  via the Central Asia Institute in Pakistan and Afghanistan that would  later win him world acclaim. Sly humour. Details. Language, terrific use of language. One of my 2013 revolution perhaps would be to read the book again ten more times. I believe that would up my literary skills! The sad aspect is that the ‘real’ writer, journalist David Oliver Relin committed suicide about a year ago, robbing our world of more literary and journalistic offerings. That’s the saddest part! 

V-Monologues in Lagos in May

The V-Monologues return in May! Taiwo Ajai-Lycett, Ireti Doyle, Dakore, Kemi Lala, Bimbo Akintola & others hit the stage. 

This May, The Make it Happen Productions in collaboration with the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND), bring the classic V-Monologues, (The Nigerian Story) back on stage.

“The strength of a woman is in her ability to speak up and refuse to be put down. Nigerian women are tired of the violence and we are using the theater and performance tools to pass this message,” said the producer, Kemi Lala Akindoju. “The finest and best female actors in Nigeria have given themselves to this cause and will performing on the 3rd and 4th of May.”

Showing in Agip Recital Hall, The Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos on May 3 and 4, 2013 at 6pm on the 3rd and 3pm and 6pm on the 4th.The V Monologues is produced and directed by Kemi Lala Akindoju and Ifeoma Fafunwa respectively. The Command performance for the play will hold on the 4th of May by 6pm.

Regular tickets are available for N3, 500 and VIP tickets are available for N5, 000 as well as the command performance tickets.

Countdown to PHWBC 2014

A special press conference was held on April 23rd 2013, to officially announce the countdown to Port Harcourt’s tenure as World Book Capital (WBC) 2014. The Garden City will assume the title on 23rd April next year which is World Book and Copyright Day. The press conference was called by the Deputy Governor of Rivers State, H.E. Engineer Tele Ikuru, Chairman of the PH WBC Committee, as planning for this exciting year of events is now underway.

Present was the distinguished panel to support the countdown; it included the writers Pa Gabriel Okara and Captain Elechi Amadi, Trustee of the Rainbow Book Club, Mrs. Judy Nwanodi and the Honourable Commissioner of Information Mrs Ibim Semenitari. Also in attendance were various members of the Port Harcourt 2014 WBC committee which is headed by the Deputy Governor and which includes high ranking Rivers State government officials. 

The press conference officially began with an opening address by H.E. Engineer Ikuru. He named other foreign cities that had worn the crown previously, including Yerevan, the 2012 holder which was handing over the WBC baton to Bangkok on the day of the press conference. H.E. Engineer Ikuru also spoke about the significance of Port Harcourt’s win to the city and the nation; he concluded by declaring that the official countdown to 2014 had begun.

Mrs. Nwanodi and Captain Elechi Amadi also gave speeches. Mrs. Nwanodi pointed out the historical significance of Port Harcourt and urged all stakeholders to join hands with the Rivers State Government and the Rainbow Book Club to ensure the success of the year-long activities. Captain Amadi began by congratulating the noble citizens of Port Harcourt on the WBC victory; he emphasized the benefits of reading and concluded with a call for writers to write more; publishers to publish more; printers to print more and readers to read more.

The UNESCO Abuja Officer-in-charge, Prof.(Mrs.) Hassana Alidou, though absent due to a previous commitment, sent in her address in which she congratulated the people of Port Harcourt and Nigeria as a whole  saying the win was ‘…a global recognition of Nigeria’s distinguished literary tradition.’

The press was invited to ask questions; many were concerned about the lasting benefits of the programmes for 2014. The panel assured them that the planned initiatives have been carefully created to ensure sustainability with all programmes for schools, libraries and writers having provision for the transfer of skills that will empower local stakeholders to be able to carry on with the programs long after 2015. 

Finally, the Honourable Commissioner for Information gave the closing remarks in which she called on all Nigerians to support the project and encouraged the press to ensure the story of Port Harcourt World Book Capital 2014 is told to the world.

Ayodele Arigbabu: The Future of Social Media and Publishing

Ayodele Arigbabu is the publisher, DADA Books. In this interview, he shares some really interesting futuristic ideas on publishing and social media which go beyond now. Get ready for social media and publishing, the sci-fi version, Arigbabu's version. 

Publishing goes digital

The things that I see, many of them are not here yet. Just me, imagining. It is possible for me to design some things and post a digital file on my website and different people around the world can download and print on a million different machines around the world. I am interested in seeing what the implication of that will be. It will come back to being able to print the book in bulk; it may not be in the same way that we know the book to be today. Or it might be. But what if, it is possible to just do a digital file for a book?

What if the model changes so much and it does not matter if it is being pirated because the more popular it is, the more money you make. What if that model that works for blogs, also works for books, what if the model changes so much, as such the more people that download your book, the more money you make. The more popular it gets, the more money you make somehow. For example, Google ads, what if what you print carries ads and the more you print, the ads are synchronises somehow because the more people print it, the more they can make money from it. So, that means that you are now going to make money from people pirating your book, so to say.

Whoever comes up with that idea, it will change the game of publishing. There will just be no point selling; imagine someone locking up a blog and saying that you need some access code before you read, unless there is a serious need for it and then, the person won't make that much money. If this happens t traditional publishing, there will be a pyramid: a few people at the top,  a few more people in the middle, and lots more people below.

Why are Nigerian programmers not tapping into the opportunities in the publishing sector?

There is a potential of technology. If you work with programmers, you will understand what is going on, many of them are doing copy and paste and they are not entrepreneurial. It is hard work. I can also understand why they are like that: this place is not like that place. So, to code for six months at a stretch, he will use his small generator, when there is no power; if your father is not rich, you have to fuel your gen yourself. I am sure that after the first month, you will ask yourself serious questions. Before long, you are tempted to take on the next job; you can only do one project at a time. The environment does not create that space for them to work.  These guys are usually about cash and carry and it usually affects the quality of their skills, and they keep building replicative things that are easier to make, they don't code for innovative stuffs.

The hologram and publishing

The first game changer is the printing idea but the real game changer is the hologram. What we have right now with the Kindle and all that is that you must have the device, you must be on one ecosystem or the other but the beauty of the traditional book is that you can take it anywhere and everywhere, you don't need to be on any platform before you can read your book; you just buy it. You can carry it anywhere to read so that's where the holographic book comes in: you don't need a device to read and you don't need an object. You need a device but you are interfacing with the book, not as a device but as a hologram.

The hologram projects an object that is just a manipulation of light. You are just seeing something that looks like a book but it responds to your touch. Meaning that you can flip it as you read; everything that you do on your device you can still do with the hologram. Maybe your device can be small and you don't need to carry something bulky. Once you have that, it means that your films, your music can also be on it. It is like carrying a flash drive that contains all your files. You can beam it on the wall and read. That's the one I look forward to. 

I know they do holograms of people. Like at teleconferences, a hologram will appear at the other end, and talk, instead of just seeing the person's face. Though it is still in the early stages. They did a Tupac show with Tupac on stage, where he was performing and interacting with the other performers on stage. However, it was just an actor somewhere, they did a 3D model of Tupac; the actor wore the motion capture stuff, they had rehearsed it perfectly, so he was doing his own thing somewhere and it was hologrammed on stage.

The Challenge

The problem is that I think up these things before they happen because I don't have the money to make it happen. So many of them. When I look at the trends in technology, I see where the logical end could be and the way it is, maybe somebody would have done that calculation, five years ago before me and the person has the capacity to do the coding and put a team together. We are working on all those things as well.

--The interview was sent in by Temitayo Olofinlua

Favourite Five: Lara Daniels

Lara Daniels is a a published author of African romance suspense novels The Officer's Bride and Thorns with Roses. She is a registered nurse by day and an avid romance writer by night.  Lara lives with her family – a husband and three precious children in Texas where she remains true to her passion of all time: writing.  Read an excerpt of her upcoming book Lessons in Love

Intuition by Allegra Goodman

A page turner that had me reeling as the drama unfolded, the story is thought provoking – a clash of ethics and science, and how much scientists sometimes need to let go and let intuition guide them. I loved this book for so many reasons. As a nurse working in a country where I am daily bombarded with ethical issues, I strongly related with the story. 

Daughters Who Walk this Path by Yejide Kilanko

Let me start by saying I love this book. This book is more than the story of young girl's sexual abuse. For me, it exposes two huge cultural flaws: one, the lack of communication within Yoruba families; two, denial as a form of coping mechanism when faced with challenges. Both flaws are detrimental not only to adults, but to the children. 

The Glass Case by Kristin Hannah

The Glass Case is a short story of a woman who grew up, got married and had a child-- all in the same small town. She feels stuck and even worse, feels that she hasn’t lived up to her mother’s expectations. One day, something tragic happens that helps her to understand that she already has what really matters in life: a family that loves her. As a working mother with three young children, this story helped me re-prioritize, taught me one lesson: I may not be where I want to be in life, but I have every reason to be grateful for where I am. 

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

My Sister’s Keeper is an emotional book that narrates the story of a family who brought another human child (Anna) into the world for the sole purpose of becoming a bone marrow match for her older sister, Kate who has leukaemia   This is another book that deals with ethics in medicine, but beyond that, it took me on a journey of deep reflection as I examined what it meant to be a good parent: Is it right to save your child’s life even if it means sacrificing another child? 

Fifty Shades Trilogy by EL James

And now to the romance genre. Many would describe the series as erotica, but I’d say that underneath Fifty Shades is a beautiful love story of two flawed people dealing with self-esteem issues. These two fell in love and found a way to make their relationship work. I love this book so much, it truly destroyed my ability to enjoy any other romantic fiction. I’m bad with reading reviews so when I bought it, I never knew what I was in for until I’d reached the fiftieth page or so. The downside was the choice of expletives used by Anna, the heroine, but even then, it was a page turner. Yes, it could have used some more editing because of its repetitive use of certain words; yet, in my opinion, no other romance book - because of its unique story- tops this. 

RBC Celebrates World Poetry Day

On March 21st, the Rainbow Book Club joined the rest of the  world to celebrate the World Poetry day. The event held at the poolside of Le Meridien, Ogeyi Place, Port Harcourt and featured a discussion of Mr Ogbonge Poliktisan an anthology of poems in pidgin English by Chief  Anthony Abagha. 

            

Dr A. Abagha, an Engineer by training described himself as a teacher and politician who branched into literature when an interesting literature teacher in secondary school.           

            

The evening was a blend of poetry, jazz and games with poets-- like Dr Obari Gomba, senior lecturer University of Port Harcourt, Joy Esku Sec. PEN and Treasurer ANA (Rivers State Chapters), Annah Dornubari and  budding poets like Tokoneh Kalango --thrilling the audience with their poetry. The event also had representatives from British Council, members of the press and The University of Port Harcourt community.

Another highlight of the evening was the presentation ‘Port Harcourt UNESCO World Book Capital 2014, our City, our Project’ by Mrs Koko Kalango, Founder of the Rainbow Book Club. In her address, she explained that the World Book Capital was an initiative by UNESCO where a city is designated on the account of the quality of their programmes to encourage books, to represent the world as “Book Capital” for one year. Rainbow Book Club put in a bid for Port Harcourt and beat cities like Oxford to win the title for next year. She called on everyone to get involved with the Port Harcourt World Book Capital programmes as there would be events for different groups of people; schools, individuals, communities, organisations, etc. She concluded by saying that 2014 will be a year of learning, reading, fun and promoting Nigeria and Africa through books. 

While this celebration of poetry and literature was going on in Port Harcourt, news came in, that miles away in America, one of Nigeria’s greatest literary exports, Prof. Chinua Achebe had died. Achebe was an honorary member of the Rainbow Book Club.

The Reading ended with the announcement of date for next month’s event,  Friday April 26th, and in honour of the late Achebe, the RBC Book of the month for April will be Things Fall Apart.   

--Report was written by Daniella Menezor and Maxwell Masi, Rainbow Book Club