The Ghana Library Authority has launched a national short story writing competition among students to keep them engaged while home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dubbed, the “National Short Story Writing Challenge,” the import of the contest is to curate more short stories by young people and make them available for a wider audience through the Ghana Library App.
The challenge
The National Short Story Writing Challenge, which is an open subject story writing contest for children from age nine to 18, will allow the contestants to write about any topic of their interest on any subject.
The contest, which is free to participate in, forms part of measures to stimulate the minds of young people and to optimize responsible use of time during the stay-at-home efforts of the government to fight the spread of COVID-19.
Creative skills
Speaking at the launch, which was done online, the Executive Director of the Ghana Library Authority Mr Hayford Siaw stated, “We all know the crisis the whole world is facing as a result of the COVID -19 pandemic. Schools, public libraries and other places which will intellectually engage children have all been shut down. Therefore, we are launching this challenge to encourage young writers and to intellectually engage them at home.”
He observed that a lot of Ghanaian children were very imaginative saying, “and you will be amazed at how a nine-year-old will write in a very creative way. You may even think it was written by a professional adult writer”.
“The interesting part is, winning stories will be published on the Ghana Library App so this basically means that we are encouraging children to write for children,” he added.
Mr Siaw explained that the contest sought to inspire young writers nationwide to showcase their creative and critical thinking skills.
“Selected applicants will be divided into two age groups; Junior Group will comprise applicants from nine to 12 years while the Senior Group will comprise applicants from 13 to 18 years,” he explained.
Prizes
The winners of each group and their respective runners up will receive cash prizes of GHC1,000 for the winner, while the first runner-ups will receive GHC500 and the second runners-ups GHC300.
Mr Siaw said the winners would be honoured as ambassadors and their stories published on the Ghana Library App.
Guidelines
He explained that the students would be required to register to participate via – www.ghanalibrary.org/shortstorychallenge – to fill an application form and click on the upload button to upload entries.
“The entry must be a Word document (MS Word) or Portable Document Format (PDF) file and not more than 1500 words in Arial font,” he outlined.
He added that the closing date for entry would be May 10, 2020, saying that all entries must be submitted before 5 pm GMT on the closing date of the competition.
Source: graphic.com.gh
