2011 PEN/STUDZINSKI LITERARY AWARDS

Entries invited for short stories in English.

The South African Centre of International PEN (SA PEN) has launched the second in the series of PEN/STUDZINSKI Literary Awards. Entries for the award for original short stories in English are called for and AFRICAN PENS, a compilation of the short-listed stories, will be published in mid-2011.

Prizes totalling £10 000 will once again be donated by American philanthropist and global investment banker, John Studzinski. The first, second and third prizes will be £5 000, £3 000 and £2 000, respectively. Nobel Laureate and SA PEN Honorary Member, J.M. Coetzee, will once again select the winning entries.

The 2011 PEN/STUDZINSKI Literary Award aims to encourage creative writing in southern Africa and will offer talented writers an exciting opportunity to launch or develop a literary career. Twelve contributors to the earlier HSBC/SA PEN series have now published their own books, including Ceridwen Dovey who won the 2008 Sunday Times Fiction Prize. Petina Gappah, an early winner, went on to sign a three-book contract with Faber & Faber in the UK and Farrar Strauss & Giroux in the US.

Three of the five short-listed stories for the Caine prize for African Writing first appeared in AFRICAN PENS 2007 – the model for AFRICAN PENS 2011. The story Poison, set in a threatened Cape Town and written by Henrietta Rose-Innes, was chosen by J.M. Coetzee as the winner of the 2007 HSBC/SA PEN Literary Award and it went on to win the 2008 Caine Prize of £10 000.

Led by author Shaun Johnson, the 2009 project received over 800 entries from writers throughout Africa, but this year the organisers have reverted to appealing only to writers living in the 15 countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC*). The genre is still the short-story, this time between 3,000 and 5,000 words.

The closing date is June 30. Writers who are citizens of SADC countries are encouraged to prepare short stories for submission. Further information and detailed rules of entry can be found at www.sapen.co.za