The annual Intwasa short story writing competition is now open to upcoming writers, the festival director has said.
Raisedon Baya told NewsDay yesterday that the competition would run until the end of July.
The winner will receive the Yvonne Vera Award which carries a $500 prize.
“We named the award after the late Yvonne as an honour and paying homage to her as one of the leading writers to come out of Bulawayo. We want upcoming writers to follow in her giant footsteps,” said Baya.
The short story writing competition is the precursor to the annual music, theatre, fashion and poetry jamboree — Intwasa Arts Festival that will run from September 18 to 22.
Baya said the competition received an overwhelming response last year with a number of entries coming from Zimbabweans based in the Diaspora. He said the junior and local languages categories had been scrapped due to poor response.
“We had a number of good stories by those based in the Diapora, but the entries we got last year for the junior competition were not good enough and we have parked that award for this year. We are also reviewing the Ndebele writing competition as we did not get many entries last year.”
The winner of the competition will be announced in September during the festival.
