The Bessie Head Heritage Trust, after a brief hiatus, has big
things in store for the public this year. They will be holding both a writing
competition and a workshop. They have a new sponsor for the prizes for the
writing competition, Diamond Educational
Publishers. The competition this year will only be for short story, and to
improve the quality of the submissions they will be holding a one-day short
story writing workshop in Gaborone, to be facilitated by three past Bessie Head
Literature Prize winners: Wame Molefhe, Wazha Lopang, and Lauri Kubuitsile.
“We realised that we needed a workshop component to the prize in
order to develop and support our writers,” Trustee Mary Lederer said. The plan
is to see the workshop grow into a week-long, residential event, and eventually
for the competition to go back to a more expanded prize.
The workshop will be held on Saturday 1 August 2015. The basics of
short story writing will be taught, including understanding what “show, don’t
tell” really means, writing realistic dialogue, building dramatic tension in
your story, understanding why reading is important to writing, and choosing
your point of view. A representative from the Trust will brief participants on
how to submit their stories for the competition.
For anyone interested in submitting for the competition, this is a
workshop not to be missed. People chosen to attend the workshop will also have
the unique opportunity to have the stories that they intend to submit to the
competition later in the year read and critiqued by one of the workshop
facilitators.
To apply for the workshop, you must submit a 500-word flash-fiction story in English to bessiehead@gmail.com by
1 June 2015. It should be sent as a Word
attachment, double-spaced, 12 pt. font. All chosen workshop participants will
be contacted through email by 24 June 2014.
The short story competition is scheduled for later in the year,
with the deadline for submissions set for 15 September 2015. Details regarding
submission guidelines will be released after the workshop and will be found on
the Bessie Head Heritage Trust website (www.bessiehead.org).
For further
details regarding the workshop or the competition, please contact the Trust at
bessiehead@gmail.com.
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