First Bank of Nigeria (FBN) Plc has been identified as the sponsor of “The Writer Competition”, an online ‘reality’ writing competition.
FBN Plc created the competition in collaboration with an online art and opinion magazine, www.tnc.com.ng with the sole aim of educating and encouraging young African writers. The competition, now in its third year promises to be even bigger.
According to Olawale Adetula, representing the project initiators, “Just like the first two seasons, contestants will be given a topic or theme to write on each week and members of the public, as well as the judges, assess them and vote to keep the best writers in the competition until one writer is left standing”.
Over the last two years, the competition has been exciting and keenly contested across West Africa but this year, everything changes.
The competition is bigger and better with more evictions every week and more prize money at stake.
Explaining the process, Adetula, said that 12 finalists will be shortlisted from the call for entries submissions. These writers will be mentored by three judges – Eghosa Imasuen, Seun Salami and Myne Whitman and will contest in four rounds of the online writing competition where three contestants will be evicted weekly.
The competition will require all writers to send in their themed stories weekly by a fixed deadline. Posts from contestants will be put up for members of the public to read and vote on. At the end of the voting period, the panel of judges will evaluate the stories and score them using pre-communicated criteria.
The public votes from the audience and the votes from the judges will be combined and based on this; contestants will be judged and eliminated weekly until a final winner – THE WRITER – emerges.
Who is it for? The competition is for all Africans who love to write. There is no age, nationality or location restriction. All Africans or people of African origin are encouraged to send in pre-qualification entries to be considered.
To stand a chance to qualify for the competition, simply write and send in a flash fiction story that is not more than 500 words long (It can be less than this but definitely not more).
The theme for this year’s entry stories is
The first — what? That’s entirely up to you. The first kiss. The first story. The first bite. The first child. The first car. The first man. The first word. Anything. It can be about a time or a place or a person or a situation or anything along the continuum.
Be creative. Any Style, direction and format is allowed – the more creative and well written, the better your chances of qualifying.
Interested participants are to send their entries to thewriter@thenakedconvos.com on or before midnight, February 21st, 2014.
At the end of The Writer competition, there will be three winners. The First Place is $1,200; second place $800 and third place $600.