2016 Writivism Creative Writing Workshops Call for Applications

The Writivism 2016 workshops will be held on various dates in January, March and April 2016 in five different African cities. The three-day non-residential workshops are planned for Goma, Dakar, Abidjan, Accra and Kampala. For the first time, we shall hold Non Fiction and Poetry workshops besides Fiction and shall hold some in French besides the English ones. Below are the details of the various workshops.

• January 8 – 10, 2016: Goma (Fiction – held in French)
• January 15 – 17, 2016: Dakar (Non Fiction – held in French)
• January 22 – 24, 2016: Abidjan (Fiction – held in French)
• March 6 – 8, 2016: Accra (Non Fiction – held in English)
• April 15 – 17, 2016: Kampala (Poetry – held in English)

Another innovation is that whereas our workshops have in the past been limited to writers based on the continent, the Accra workshop shall be open to emerging writers based in the Caribbean.

Facilitators for the various workshops shall be announced in due time (in October, 2015) and processes for applying for limited travel funding to attend some of the workshops for needy applicants shall be announced after successful applicants have been selected (in November, 2015). Successful applicants will be announced at the Ake Arts and Books Festival (16 – 20 November, 2015), in Abeokuta Nigeria.

Applications process closes on October 30, 2015.

The workshops will include daily two-hour master classes on creative writing, group sessions of critiquing of draft stories, one on one sessions with facilitators and private time for participants to re-write their stories. A separate process to select talented and committed writers to be assigned mentors shall follow the workshop. Those taken on for mentoring shall work on two separate pieces in their art form (fiction, nonfiction and poetry) to be published by online publication partners. Fiction mentees shall also write a short story for submission to the Writivism Short Story Prize.

The 2016 workshops aim at identifying emerging writers in Anglophone and Francophone Africa as well as the Caribbean.

Application Guidelines

• Applicants must be resident on the African continent or in the Caribbean;
• Applicants must not have published a book before;
• All applications must be made online; here for the Fiction (in French in Goma and Abidjan) and Non Fiction (in French for Dakar); here for the Non Fiction (in English in Accra, includes writers based in the Caribbean) and here for the Poetry (to be held only in Kampala);
• Deadline for submission is 30 October 2015 midnight, East African time;
• The list of successful applicants shall be announced at the Ake Books and Arts Festival 2015;
• The workshops are residential and participants are responsible for the transport to and from the venue, meals and accommodation during the workshop at a specific rate;
• There will be special travel funding opportunities for the Goma, Dakar and Accra workshops, but this should not be a condition for applying as the application process for these will open after successful applicants have been announced and will have their own eligibility criteria;
• Participants in past Writivism workshops can apply if they have since not published a book.

Checking the official Writivism website for more information.

Photo credit: James Murua's Literature Blog