My Mind Words Paper [Search results for announcements] 

We expect that you have a handful of writings to make as we've completed posting the announcements lurking in our search alerts from December 2011 to January 2012. Unfortunately, there were a few good ones that we missed out on; their deadlines have already passed. But there are other great opportunities that you can check out from today's updates.

So, it's zero backlog for Writers Afrika, officially! Now we can focus on new announcements which we will post as they come.

By the way, for those who are having a hard time reading white font -we're sorry. We will still be using the new template for a few more weeks/ months. But all your comments/ suggestions on the blog design are being noted.

And thank you to those who already donated for the blog. We can't thank you enough. There were only a few who heeded the call but we're not losing hope that we can continue this free service to African writers.

Which brings us to a few fundraising ideas - e.g., a custom blog design for a $50 donation or "have a virtual writing assistant for $10". We know writers do not earn much from their works, so we guess doing something (aside from regularly updating this blog) in return for a donation might work.

We're also thinking of freeing up the middle bar for event/ book advertisements for as low as $15 - $30 a month. Shoot us an e-mail at writersafrika@gmail.com if you're interested. The first one gets the top spot (above the fold) for our thousands of followers to see. We'll post the announcement soon.

That's it for today. Good luck with your writing!

Deadline: 20 June 2012

Short Story Day Africa aims to highlight the outstanding short fiction African writers have to offer the world. The project encourages everyone of all ages and all genders to do something in honour of the short story.

COMPETITION GUIDELINES

1. Any African citizen, or person who is part of the African diaspora, as well as persons residing permenantly (granted permenant residence) in an African country, may enter. Entries will be read blind (names removed).

2. Email your entry to info@shortstorydayafrica.org with the subject line Caine Prize Competition. Include your name, telephone number, an email address where we can contact you and postal address in your entry. Also include the name of one of Jamal Mahjoub’s novels.

3. The deadline for entries is Wedensday 20 June 2012.

4. Stories must be your own original work, and no longer than 500 words in length.

5. By submitting a story the author attests that it is their own original work and grant non-exclusive print and digital rights to Short Story Day Africa, The Caine Prize for African writing, and Books Live for publicity purposes.

6. Winners will be notified by 31 July 2012, though should we be flooded by stories, we reserve the right to delay the announcements.

7. We will not share information. We will, however, add you to Short Story Day Africa mailing list for the express purpose of informing you of next years event.

8. Stories are limited to the English language.

9. The judges decision is final.

10. To qualify for entry, you must follow @shortstoryAFR, @Caine Prize, @BooksLiveSA and @HenriettaRI on Twitter.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For queries/ submissions: info@shortstorydayafrica.org

Website: http://shortstorydayafrica.org

Deadline: 30 September 2012

TellingTales Press wishes to announce a short story writing competition for youth and budding writers. Interested participants are requested to submit their scripts by 30th September. Winning scripts will be published in an anthology, courtesy of TellingTales Press, as well as cash prizes for the first, second and third placed positions. This short story writing competition is aimed at reaching out to youthful writers with great potential in providing revolutionary works of literature.

RULES

• The competition is FREE. You are also allowed to enter a MAXIMUM of three entries to compete for the ultimate prize.
• Only manuscripts with 1,500 words or less shall be accepted. Any manuscript outside this margin will be disqualified.
• All entries must be in English and unpublished.
• Entries must be in an electronic format, that is, word documents with 12pt Arial font double spaced (see submission guidelines for more details).
• All entries must be submitted by 30th September.
• Winners will be notified by 20th October through E-mail. Their names will also be published on our Announcements page.
• The competition is open to everyone. Youthful writers are encouraged to submit their manuscripts.

• 1st prize: Kshs. 5,000
• 2nd prize: Kshs. 3,000
• 3rd prize: Kshs. 1,500
• 4th through 20th scripts shall be published in an anthology of short stories.

MANUSCRIPT LAYOUT AND FORMATTING

• Electronic files should be in Word Document format (".doc", ".docx")
• 1 inch margins on all four sides of the page
• 12 pt font Arial double-spaced
• Do not include any other material that is not part of the manuscript. If you have instructions or comments to the editor, please provide them on a separate document.

If your script conforms to the above layout requirements, then please provide the following to accompany the manuscript:

• Manuscript Submission Form (download here)
• A synopsis of the manuscript

Download: manuscript submission form

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For submissions: submit your manuscript here

Website: http://www.tellingtalespress.com

Our goal is to find every possible legitimate opportunity for African writers ahead of other resource sites. If Writers Afrika has helped you, donations of any amount will be appreciated.

By donating to Witers Afrika, you are supporting both:

1. Our volunteers who are online 16 hours a day, 7 days a week to scout and screen writing opportunities for writers; and

2. Thousands of writers of color who have made this blog their daily source of writing opportunities.

Writers of color remain underrepresented in world literature today. Writers Afrika is a free service/ not-for-profit initiative that provides more venues for writers of color to be heard and recognized.

Our volunteers do not seek profits but the opportunity to continue this free service for writers of color. They thoroughly read through hundreds of announcements daily to handpick the more relevant/ legitimate opportunities; and are available on Yahoo Messenger to accommodate information/ research requests - REAL-TIME. The Upcoming Deadlines calendar is regularly updated, and deadline alerts are sent out to our Facebook and Twitter followers on a daily basis.

We're sure you do not want to miss a single opportunity to write, be heard and recognized, and potentially earn from your writings. We urge you to support this free service/ not-for-profit initiative today. A $2 donation will be immensely appreciated. Thank you very much.

Shameless reminder: it's almost payday and we still need your support. Please do not hesitate to donate any amount - it will be greatly appreciated. If our thousands of followers could donate even $1, then our blogs would be able to survive for years.

By the way, this is the final blog template, unless you have suggestions to make your visit more enjoyable. It took us weeks to finalize the colors, the header graphics, and the footer layout. We hope you appreciate our effort to provide you a more appealing design aside from the regular blog updates. Yes, no weekend off for us.

And speaking of blog updates, there are hundreds of announcements that we have not posted yet and we'll do so in the coming days. We also hope to start sending you deadline alerts via Facebook and Twitter within the week.

Start the week right - give a little love :) This is an initiative worth supporting.

Blessed Easter Sunday!

We were able to raise a little over $200 from our first wave of call for donations (90% of which came from our Write Jobs blog followers) and we're sincerely thankful for the support. The donations were used to pay a small honorarium to our blog designer and volunteers who helped us set up our search and alert tools, and backtrack to as far as mid-2011 announcements that we missed when we temporarily stopped operations.

We urge you to support the work we do and the service we provide - just through the first 3 months as we try to sort out how else we can source funds to keep our blogs alive. Perhaps, you are already an established writer or you can find opportunities somewhere else, but we would like to exist and keep running our resource sites for young and emerging writers who check our blogs daily hoping to find an opportunity where they can hopefully be recognized.

A small donation will go a long way. We won't promise to send you the Hot Jobs reports right away as we're still trying to raise funds to hire a few more people for encoding and proofing - but we're targeting to release it in a few weeks. This new blog design is final - and we can focus on the Hot 500 project from today.

Thank you very much in advance.

Deadline: 5 August 2011

Rhodes University’s Highway Africa programme and its partners are pleased to announce the opening of the nomination process for the prestigious Highway Africa New Media Awards.

For 11 years these unique awards within the profession of journalism on the continent, have been rewarding pioneering, innovative and creative use of technology in journalism and the media. The Awards were established reward and recognise African innovation in the area of digital media and to highlight the role that digital technologies play in journalism and the media at large.

The Highway Africa New Media Awards are in three categories:

Individual – awarded to individual persons who design or appropriate new affordable applications of communication technologies to overcome the limitations of existing infrastructure and / or capital resources.

Not – for – profit – awarded to users of appropriate media technology to advance and assist communities and persons limited by infrastructure and / or technological access.

Corporate – awarded to corporate groups for creative and appropriate adaptation of technologies within the continent to complete effectively in the wider environment.

Broad Criteria for Entries:

The judges will consider the use of new media technologies to:

• Advance press freedom on the continent;
• Encourage social empowerment amongst marginalised communities;
• Highlight innovative and creative applications of global technology for the benefit of the continent’s overall media development.

Technical Requirements for All Entries:

1. Digital /Online platform must be functional and updated.
2. Creative use of multimedia components, such as text, photograph, video.
3. Aesthetic appeal, while being user friendly.
4. Digital / online platform should have been regularly updated in the period August 2010 and July 2011.
5. The judge’sdecision is final and no correspondence will be entertained after the closing date and when the final announcements are made.
6. Highway Africa reserves the right not to award prizes in any category.

Submissions can be made electronically to awards@highwayafrica.com copied to m.letlhaku@ru.ac.za and b.jacobs@ru.ac.za. The closing date for entries is 5 August 2011, 16:30 South African time.

The winners will be announced at the prestigious SABC-Telkom-Highway Africa New Media Awards gala dinner on the evening of 18 September 2011 during the 15th edition of the Highway Africa Conference.

For more information contact Bronwyn Jacobs (b.jacobs@ru.ac.za).

Download application form >>

Contact Information:

For inquiries: b.jacobs@ru.ac.za

For submissions: m.letlhaku@ru.ac.za and b.jacobs@ru.ac.za

Website: http://www.highwayafrica.com

Deadline: 30 June 2012

This year, as part of Short Story Day, we will be running two competitions for African writers who can’t legally drive or vote. If you live in Africa, can hold a pen or type, and are under eighteen, this means YOU! Prizes are sponsored by Books Live, S.A. Partridge and Lauri Kubuitsile.

YA SHORT STORY COMPETITION FOR AGES 12-17

WHAT? Write a short story (500 words max!) about being Young in the City. The city can be anywhere in Africa, or make one up! Fiction is your tool!

The Judge: S.A. Partridge, South Africa’s award wining YA writer.

The Prizes: S.A. Partridge will be giving away a signed copy of each of her novels. Other prizes include R500 voucher from Exclusive Books, sponsored by Books Live. Winning entries will be published amongst some of Africa’s most talent writers.

UNDER 12’S SHORT STORY COMPETITION FOR AGES 11 AND BELOW

WHAT? Write a story (no longer than 1 A4 page!) with an inanimate object as the main character: a rock, a toothbrush, your granny’s handbag. Give your character a voice, and tell us their story. “Yuck, she’s been eating garlic again!”

The Judge: Lauri Kubuitsile, Botswana’s award winning YA and children’s writer.

The Prizes: A R250 voucher from Exclusive Books, sponsored by Books Live, and one of Lauri’s books. Winning entries may be published.

COMPETITION GUIDELINES:

1. Entrants must be living in South Africa and meet age requirements state above.

2. Email your entry to kids@shortstorydayafrica.org with the subject line YA Competition / UNDER 12’S OR post it to SSDA Head Quarters, YA Competition, 12 Bristol Road, South Africa, 7925. Include your name, age, telephone number, an email address (if you have) and postal
address in your entry.

3. Deadline: 30 June 2012. Postal entries postmarked by 30 June 2012 are eligible.

4. Stories must be your own original work, and meet the length requirements.

5. By submitting a story the young authors grant non-exclusive print and digital rights to Short Story Day Africa and Books Live.

6. Winners will be notified by 31 July 2012, though should we be flooded by stories, we reserve the right to delay the announcements.

7. We will not share information or use it for any other purpose than to inform you should you win.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For queries/ submissions: kids@shortstorydayafrica.org

Website: http://shortstorydayafrica.org