Literary Laddership Fellowship for Emerging African Authors 2025 – YOA

Deadline: April 30, 2025

Applications are open for the Literary Laddership Fellowship for Emerging African Authors 2025. The Literary Laddership Fellowship, based by Suyi Davies Okungbowa in 2022, is now accepting purposes for its fourth version. This digital fellowship helps rising African fiction writers by offering a $500 grant, a 3-month digital residency, and entry to a group of observe.

Fellows may have the OPPORTUNITY to put in writing, enhance their craft, join with different writers, and discover publication alternatives. Some previous fellows have gone on to win awards and be featured in publications, additional strengthening the mission of this fellowship.

Benefits

• $500 Grant: Paid out month-to-month to assist your inventive endeavors.
• Digital Residency: A 3-month digital residency offering time, area, and sources to create new work or full an present one.
• Community of Practice: Access to a non-public on-line group of fellows and different rising authors alongside writing professionals sharing craft classes, greatest practices, and creating new information.
• Publishing Ecosystem: Support with submission and publication of your work, together with steering on numerous publishing routes and entry to publishing professionals.

Eligibility

• Open to rising authors of African descent, based totally on the African continent, and writing in English.
• Applicants should be aged 18 and above.

Judging Criteria

An nameless, impartial staff of judges will assess all purposes and pattern writing primarily based on the next standards:

• Storytelling: Applicant’s story is compelling on each story and craft ranges. Characters, plot/narrative arc, setting, description, dialogue, level-of-view, voice/tone/temper—all/most are at excessive ranges of high quality and/or reveal mastery of those storytelling parts
• Language and story construction: Applicant’s writing is compelling and assured on the sentence and structural ranges, and demonstrates that the applicant is a eager scholar of language use and storytelling craft
• Style/Approach/Themes: Applicant’s work is dangerous, subversive, crosses borders and/or makes an attempt to carry one thing new/contemporary/totally different to the literary area, with out being gimmicky
• Genre: Applicant demonstrates clear understanding and mastery of the necessities and conventions of the sub-style of fiction during which they’re writing
• Project plan: Applicant demonstrates their suitability and preparedness for the necessities of the fellowship, and has a transparent plan for undertaking completion

Application

To apply, submit the next data to [email protected]. (Kindly make sure that no title or figuring out data is current within the submission paperwork/supplies. Such data could also be current within the electronic mail physique).

• Cover letter: In the e-mail physique, briefly describe your foundation for assembly the eligibility standards.
• Writing pattern: A pattern of three,000 phrases max (doc, docx, pdf), throughout 2 totally different works, cut up nevertheless the creator needs. They will obtain any form of work, however excerpts from a prolonged work-in-progress (novel or novella) are really useful over shorter fiction (flash, brief tales, novelette). Do not ship in a single work of three,000 phrases. Judges want to see how authors work throughout totally different items.
• Project description, fellowship plan, funds: A separate doc (2 pages max, single spaced) detailing:
  • why it’s best to get this fellowship
  • what you may be engaged on whereas right here
  • how you’ll spend the funds to attain this plan
    • NOTE: The proposed work in your plan MUST be a manuscript of minimal novella-size (i.e. 17,500 – 40,000 phrases) or novel size (i.e. 40,000+ phrases). All candidates should be aged 18 and above.
• Response time: Selected fellows will probably be introduced (and contacted) between 30-90 days from the application deadline.

For extra data, go to Literary Laddership Fellowship.