The Island Prize, established in honour of South African writer Karen Jennings’ Booker-longlisted novel, An Island, is now open for submissions.
Administered by Jennings in collaboration along with her publishers, Holland Home Books (UK) and Karavan Press (South Africa), the fourth version of the prize goals to shine a lightweight on unpublished African writers by offering a platform for his or her debut novels.
The Island Prize is devoted to debut novels from African authors, providing a useful alternative for writers born in or holding citizenship of African nations.
This initiative seeks to beat the normal obstacles to publication confronted by many African writers, selling tales that resonate with their distinctive experiences and views.
“As African writers, we are sometimes confronted with a double dose of challenges. Firstly, getting revealed inside African nations could be extremely troublesome as a result of native publishers are sometimes constrained by funds. Secondly, for a lot of writers getting revealed abroad is sort of not possible as a result of the remainder of the world has sure concepts of what an African story needs to be…I understand how essential it’s that tales from Africa be given all kinds of platforms in order that they are often shared at house and overseas with out the necessity to match sure moulds. I’m proud to be a part of The Island Prize for a Debut Novel from Africa. That is one step in direction of bridging the hole between right here and there, us and them. Actually, it’s by means of prizes like these that authors throughout the continent can achieve the boldness to inform tales as they want”, stated Jennings.
To qualify for the prize, submitting authors should not have beforehand revealed a novel and can’t be represented by a literary agent. The preliminary submission course of requires writers to submit three chapters or as much as 10,000 phrases together with a canopy assertion.
These submissions can be assessed by a panel of distinguished African authors, editors, and publishers. From this, between 5 and ten submissions can be chosen for full manuscript requests, forming the longlist. The longlist will then be narrowed right down to a shortlist within the following months.
Three winners will finally be chosen from the shortlist, with the first-place winner receiving £500, and every runner-up incomes £200.
Click on right here to study extra concerning the Island Prize.