One hundred and eighty-four entries will be competing for this year’s edition of the Nigeria Prize for Literature sponsored by Nigeria LNG Limited.
The entries, which focuses on poetry, were handed over to the advisory board chaired by Professor Emeritus Ayo Banjo, at a formal ceremony today in Lagos.
The Nigeria Prize for Literature, which has a cash reward of $100,000, rotates yearly amongst four literary categories of prose fiction, poetry, drama and children’s literature.
The number of entries for this year’s edition exceeded last year’s numbers, NLNG’s General Manager, External Relations, Dr Kudo Eresia-Eke, said.
“We believe that the prize has inspired writers to want to deliberately win the prize. The number of entries for the 2017 edition exceeded the 2016 numbers, showing a six percent rise in the number of entries received and increasing interest in one of the biggest literary prize in the world. This has been the trend since 2005,” he said.
At the event, the advisory board chair immediately handed over the entries to the panel of judges led by a professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint Prof Ernest Emenyonu. This marked the beginning of the judging process which culminates in the announcement of the winner in October 2017.
Other judges are an Associate Professor of Literature at the University of Maiduguri Dr Razinat Mohammed and past winner of the prize Tade Ipadeola.
Source: The Nation