South African-based publisher Black Letter Media wants to read and publish your short stories in the third edition of their anthology The Short Story is Dead, Long Live the Short Story!
Black Letter Media is a full service print and digital publishing and bookselling company Founded by Duduzile Zamantungwa Mabaso in 2011. The organisation focuses on publishing new African storytellers who have a unique, powerful and alternative vision of Africa.
Black Letter Media is well known for its poetry with its website poetrypotion.com, and books including the Poetry Potion quarterly, short story collections and novels. Their writers are primarily from South African but include Nigeria, Uganda, Cameroon, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Cameroon and Botswana.
In their catalogue you will also find anthologies like Voices From My Clan edited by Mukoma Wa Ngugi and Obinna Udenwe as well as My Holiday Shorts. They have also published A Killing in The Sun by Dilman Dila.
Their most well-known of these is The Short Story is Dead, Long Live The Short Story which has had two editions already. The first edition which come out in 2012 was edited by Duduzile Zamantungwa Mabaso and featured writers like Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana), Chiaka Obasi (Nigeria), Tebogo Ndlovu (Zimbabwe), Emmanuel Ogukwe (Nigeria), Sitawa Namwalie (Kenya), and Obinna Udenwe (Nigeria). The second edition which came out this year featured writers like Obinna Udenwe (first prize winner), Mapule Mohulatsi (joint second prize winner), and Christine Coates (joint second prize winner).
The team at Black Letter Media are currently in the process of working on the third edition of the same. The new one uses the theme of, “The people shall…” They are looking for stories that draw inspiration from this phrase. While this phrase may be political, your story doesn’t have to be political. You may interpret it whichever way you like. They are not looking for stories that are unpredictable, that take us on a journey and capture the readers’ imagination. This competition is about celebrating the craft of short story writing.
The short listed stories will be published in the third volume of our annual short story anthology The Short Story is Dead, Long Live the Short Story! The winning short story will receive R5000, and the second and third runner-up stories will receive R1500 and R500respectively.
If you think you want in on this competition then I suggest that you click here. There you will find the usual requirements like the word count needs to be between 2000 – 6000 words and stories must have never been published online or in print before.
The most important thing to note is that Deadline: 31 May 2017, 23:59 (South African Time) as late submissions will be disregarded.
Good luck short story writers.
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