Submissions are now open to a Writers’ Workshop in Abuja hosted by the Flame Tree Writers’ Project. If you are an emerging writer from Northern Nigeria, we recommend you apply by the deadline of June 1.

In partnership with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Abuja Office, the Flame Tree Writers’ Workshop initiative is led by NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature winner Abubakar Adam Ibrahim. It is designed to support emerging writers in the craft of creative writing as a critical tool to introspect the present and imagine future potentials that will help to advance a more democratic, peaceful, gender equitable and socially just Northern Nigeria.

The project includes an all-expense paid five-day workshop to be co-facilitated by another NLNG Nigeria Prize-winning author, Chika Unigwe, in Abuja from June 24-28, 2024 in Abuja and participants will receive expert guidance in writing a short story suitable for publication in an anthology of new writing during this period.

Ibrahim remarked that he is excited about this initiative since it has been in the works for a while:

This has been a passion project of mine for so long and I am excited that with the support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, it is coming to fruition. It’s not just a workshop but a project because, in the end, we are going to publish the stories from the workshop in an anthology of new writing and get them into institutions of learning where they will be taught as part of the growing and exciting corpus of literature from this part of the country.

This first edition of the workshop is exclusively for writers from the 19 Northern States of Nigeria domiciled in the country, who must be between the ages of 18 and 35. Subsequent editions will include other geo-political zones of the country. Interested participants are expected to meet set eligibility criteria, while female emerging writers are strongly encouraged to send in their applications.

Submit here.

Deadline: June 1, 2024