BOOK SA – News

The South African Wine Writers Award, awarded in May each year at the Franschhoek Literary Festival, celebrates the art of wine journalism. Entries for this award are now open:

Entries for the 2nd Annual South African Wine Writers Award close on March 26.

The Franschhoek Wine Valley Tourist Association (FWVTA) will be awarding the 2nd Annual South African Wine Writers Award at the Franschhoek Literary Festival in May this year.

This award was initiated in 2009 as an acknowledgement to the art of wine writing in South Africa, and the R25 000 prize was won last year by Joanne Gibson, deputy editor of WINE magazine.

• Complete article at Artslink.co.za

Photo courtesy Solms-Delta

Hoor jou storie op die draadloos met die 2010 RSG en Sanlam het so pas die radiodramaskryfkompetisie. Jy kan ook lekker geld maak – die eerste prys is R20,000 en die tweede R10,000. Verlede jaar se eerste prys het gegaan aan Piet Steyn vir Die mynramp en die tweede prys aan Leon van Nierop vir Twyfelberg. Kompetisie besonderhede volg onderaan.

Doop jou veer in ink, want die radiostasie RSG en Sanlam se radiodramaskryfkompetisie vir 2010 is pas aangekondig.

Margot Luyt van RSG sê enigeen met bewese skryftalent kan vir die kompetisie inskryf, ongeag of hulle al voorheen ’n radiodrama aangepak het of nie.

Deelnemers moet net seker maak hulle hou by die voorgeskrewe riglyne.

Oor verlede jaar se inskryf-oes sê Luyt dit was lekker om te sien dat mense respek vir die radiodrama as genre begin ontwikkel.

• Lees die volledige artikel in Beeld

Foto te danke aan Scordo

Alert! There are still thirty-and-a-half writing days left to knock a short story into shape for the annual Commonwealth Foundation Short Story Competition, which closes at the end of the month.

The competition bears a structure similar to the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize: regional winners are first chosen (prize: £500) and go on to compete with one another for the top gong, which carries a purse of £2000.

Here’s all the info you need to enter:

The Commonwealth Short Story Competition is an annual scheme to promote new creative writing, funded and administered by the Commonwealth Foundation and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association. Each year around 25 winning and highly commended stories from the different regions of the Commonwealth are recorded on to CDs and broadcast on radio stations across the Commonwealth.

Anyone aged 19 or over who is a citizen of a Commonwealth country can enter, whether a professional or amateur writer. Commonwealth citizens who are 18 or under can enter the Commonwealth Essay Competition.

Stories should be original, unpublished, written in English and no more than 600 words long. Entries will be submitted in plain text via the online application form.

In addition to the first prize and four regional prizes, this year there will be special prizes for the best story for children and the best story concerning Science, Technology and Society, the Commonwealth Day theme for 2010.

There is no entry fee. Only one entry may be submitted per person. This can either be a general entry, or a story on the Commonwealth Day theme, or a story for children.

• Submit your story: click here
• Read or listen to last year’s winning stories

Winners will be announced in September. Good luck to all who enter!

Natasha Kruger is the winner of the 2010 SA Reading Race, held earlier this year in Johannesburg. The young lady managed to work her way through 158 books in 10 months, learning English along the way. The Reading Race, now in its 15th year is designed to draw children to libraries and to foster a reading culture.

Read this special report from the London Book Fair’s Lucy Holland-Smith:

This year’s winner of the Johannesburg “Reading Race” managed to get through 158 books in
just ten months, it has been revealed

The annual event, which takes place at the Rhodes Park Library in the eastern part of the South African city and is now in its 15th year, is designed to encourage children to read more, according to Johannesburg’s official website.

While the eventual winner notched up an impressive 158 books, a total of 16 children were acknowledged for their efforts.

Edith Khuzwayo, a librarian at the Rhodes Park facility, said that while the library undoubtedly benefitted from the publicity brought by the race, the primary aim of the event was indisputably to highlight the joys of reading.

• Read the complete article at LBF home

Photo courtesy Joburg.org.za

Alert! Maskew Miller Longman, sponsor of an annual, multi-language literature competition – which is in the area of youth novels this year – has just announced the dates of the writing workshops that will accompany this year’s awards process.

From the press release:

To help aspirant writers with the submission of their youth novel, Maskew Miller Longman will be hosting writer’s workshops across various provinces in South Africa. Rachelle Greeff, well-known author of various short story anthologies, novels and children’s stories will facilitate the workshops and provide guidance and useful tips on how to write interesting and engaging novels for South Africa’s youth. Rachelle regularly conducts writing courses and is also the book editor for Rapport.

To qualify to attend one of these workshops, you simply need to send a brief motivation letter and one page CV, to Bernice Snyman @ Fax (021) 531 0716 or e-mail: Bernice.Snyman@mml.co.za. Remember to indicate which workshop you would like to attend and please include your contact details.

Workshops will be limited to 25 delegates.

Dates for the workshops are as follows:

Polokwane 23 February 2010

Johannesburg 24 February 2010

Durban 25 February 2010

Cape Town 26 February 2010

Entries for the awards are being accepted in all eleven official languages, and the prizes per language are R10 000 for first place and R5 000 for the runner-up. Deadline for submission is 30 April 2010.

• Click here for the MML competition criteria and rules

We mistakenly thought that the Baobab Prize was in its third year – it’s actually turning two in 2010. Hence the correction in this post’s title.

Alert! The Baobab Prize – a literary award launched in 2008 by Deborah Ahenkorah and Ramatoulaye Shagaya that aims “to encourage the writing of African literature for young readers” – is now open for submission for its 2010 awards.

Short stories (in English) of between 1000 and 5000 words are being accepted in two categories: “Category A (stories for readers aged 8 – 11 years) or Category B (stories for readers aged 12 – 15 years)”. First prizes are $1000 per category; and there’s also an $800 “rising writer” prize for submissions from people under 18. Any African citizen may enter; the deadline is Monday, April 26 2010; send your story as an attachment to submitbaobab@gmail.com.

Lauri Kubuitsile won one of the prizes in 2008. More info at these links:

• Baobab submission guidlines
• About the prizes
• About the awards
• Contact Baobab

Good luck to all who enter!

Alert! The SA Writers’ College has announced its 2010 short story award for unpublished writers. First prize is a laptop, second prize is R2000 and the top three entries will be published on the college’s website and “and the winners will receive individual editorial guidance on their submitted works”.

Deadline is 31 March. And note: when the SA Writers’ College says “unpublished”, it means “unpublished”, as the following bullet point excerpt from the guidlines indicate (underlining in the original email):

• We only accept stories from writers who have NEVER been published in any genre, in any professional publication (for payment or otherwise). The only exception is if you have written articles for community or work newsletters, but not for payment.

Here are the competition notes in full:

* * * * * * * *

The SA WRITERS’ COLLEGE 2010 Annual Short Story Award

For Unpublished Writers in South Africa

This competition is to acknowledge excellence in creative writing in the Short Story genre. The contest is open to any writer residing in South Africa who is unpublished.

PRIZES:

First prize: A Dell Inspiron Laptop (15.4 inch screen; Core 2 Duo processor; 2 GB Memory; 160 GB hard drive)

Second Prize: R2000.00

Top three entries will be published on our college site and the winners will receive individual editorial guidance on their submitted works.

DEADLINE: 31 March 2010, via e-mail only to Nichola@sawriterscollege.co.za. Entry is free.

THEME: Power

GUIDELINES FOR ENTRIES:

Entry is limited to South African residents.

Entrants must submit a story of maximum word count: 2000 words. Any entries exceeding the word count by 50 words will not be considered.

We only accept stories from writers who have NEVER been published in any genre, in any professional publication (for payment or otherwise). The only exception is if you have written articles for community or work newsletters, but not for payment.

Stories must not have been previously published. Entrants must own full copyright to the story submitted.

Only one story per entrant is allowed.

Only e-mail submissions are acceptable, with stories attached as Word Documents. Mark your entry clearly with the subject line: SAWC Annual Short Story Competition, and submit according to rules below.
If you have not received an acknowledgement of your submission within three days, please re-send your entry.

All submissions must be sent to Nichola Meyer: Nichola@sawriterscollege.co.za.

ENTRY FORMAT:

Your first page of your Word document must include the story title, your name, email address, and total number of words of the entry.
Do not include your name on any page of your story, except the title page. All entries will be judged blind.

Make sure your story has been edited and polished according to tips and guidelines provided on our college site under “Writing Resources”.

CRITIQUES:

We do not have the time to supply a critique for each submission. If you wish to receive a professional one-page report of your work, please state your requirement on your title page. We charge R120.00 per critique.

COMPETITION RULES:

The competition is open to anyone in South Africa over the age of 16.

The competition closes on 31 March 2010, and winners will be announced and displayed on our web site by 30 April 2010.

Prizewinners will be notified via email as well as on our web site; please ensure you supply a valid email address with your entry.

Prize money will be paid via electronic transfer.

We only accept entries written in English.

Entrant must own full copyright of the piece.

Writers retain copyright, but give permission for their work to be displayed on our website.

The judges’ decision is final; no disputes will be entered into.

If your entry has not been acknowledged within 72 hours, please contact us -your mail may have got lost in transit.

SA Writers’ College reserves the right to extend the competition deadline, or cancel the competition should the entries not be of publishable quality or up to the required standard.

* * * * * * * *

• Click here for information on the judges, which include BOOK SA members Henrietta Rose-Innes, Alex Smith and Liesl Jobson

Alert! Hands up everyone who’s familiar with the work of Katharine Kilalea.

I thought as much; she’s new! Kilalea, a recent sojourner in the UK from South Africa (she left here in 2005), has published a first volume of poetry called One Eye’d Leigh that has been shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards, perhaps better known by their former name, the Whitbread Book Awards.

Kilalea stands to win £5 000 if she tops the poetry category (winner announced 5 Jan 2010); and a further £25 000 if her book is the overall winner (announced 26 Jan).

Here’s the blurb for One Eye’d Leigh, published by Caracnet:

One Eye’d Leigh is a book of portraits, experiments and objects made of words. They find their locations between Cape Town and London, between the dawn of the new millennium and the present day. Guided by a biographical thread, in her first collection Kate Kilalea borrows the techniques of a craftsman to transform material into new shapes: an artist’s concentrated gaze at the very particular subject in her portrait poems; an embroiderer’s delicate craft of stitching to create a paced poetry, meticulous in detail. Her language is familiar, her forms transparent. She leads readers through a landscape in which the lucid angles of a chair might express love more precisely than the lines of a sonnet. It is the ways in which these poems turn what is familiar into something strange and new, what is stable fluid, and how out of light darkness is seen to shine, that make these poems powerful, haunting and original.

And here’s a clip of Kilalea reading her poem “The way we look is a game of chess”:

 

 The way we look is a game of chess by Kate Kilalea [0:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

• Not playing? Listen at Caracnet home
• Listen to a second poem of Katharine Kilalea’s

You can win Kilalea’s book, plus copies of all the other 2009 Costa shortlistees (in the categories first novel, novel, biography, poetry and children’s) with the Guardian:

We’ve teamed up with Costa to give you the chance to win one of two sets of all 20 books on the 2009 shortlist.

All you need to do is answer the question below by midnight on 31 December 2009.

[...]

Who won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year?

• Enter the competition
• Tip on the 2008 Costa winner

Good luck to all who enter; and good luck to Kilalea!

Book details

• One Eye’d Leigh by Katharine Kilalea
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781857549928
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Photo courtesy Wordsmith.org.uk

Alert! Nigerian news website Punch is reporting that Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka will judge the next installment of the BBC’s Africa radio drama competition.

BOOK SA can’t find further details of the competition, but it might run along the same lines as the international competition the BBC held last year.

Anyone with information on the rules of entry, please post them as a comment below! Thanks.

Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has accepted to be a judge in next year’s British Broadcasting Corporation’s World Service African drama competition, the BBC said on Thursday.

In accepting the role, Soyinka said BBC’s season of African radio drama cut across Africa in a way that “even the written word on its own may not have.”

• Read the complete article

Book details

• Collected Plays: Volume One by Wole Soyinka
  EAN: 9780192811363
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Collected Plays: Volume Two by Wole Soyinka
  EAN: 9780192811646
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Image courtesy AfricanOpinions.com

Educational publisher Maskew Miller Longman is calling for entries for its 2011 writing competition, which will be for youth fiction.

This high-calibre award not only promotes literature by giving exposure to writers, it also supports it with prize money: R10 000 for the winners, and R5 000 for the runners up. Given that the competition is set to make awards in all eleven official languages, that’s over R150 000 in literary prize money up for grabs.

Entries close in April 2010 and submissions must comply with the rules set out here.

Get ready and get writing! More info from the press release:

Maskew Miller Longman calls for youth novel entries for its annual literature awards competition

Leading South African educational publisher, Maskew Miller Longman, is calling for entries for its 2011 Literature Awards, which will be for youth novels.

Each year Maskew Miller Longman runs an award for writing in all South Africa’s official languages. The award aims to stimulate the further development of literature in all the eleven official South African languages. This is the only competition that gives equal weighting to all eleven official languages.

The annual awards have gone from strength to strength, with several hundred entries each year. The winners of the 2010 Literature Awards for Children’s Stories will be announced at the Cape Town Book Fair in 2010.

The calibre of the competition was underscored by the fact that several finalists of the Maskew Miller Longman Literature Awards have also gone on to win MNet Awards.

The 2011 Maskew Miller Longman Literature Award: Youth Novels closes on the 30 April 2010 and the winners will be announced in June 2011.

The winner and runners-up in each category respectively receive R10 000 and R5 000 each. All winning entries will be published. Entries must be accompanied by an entry form available from Brenda Alexander at (021) 532 6000 / balexander@mml.co.za or they can be downloaded from our website (www.mml.co.za).

• MML Literature Awards home