Brooklyn, NY – The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival (BCLF) has announced its 2024 Short Fiction Story Contest, calling on Caribbean-native and diasporic writers to submit their original works for a chance to claim coveted awards. This annual competition, designed to unearth and encourage “the distinctive voice and story of the Caribbean-descended writer,” creates a platform for emerging talents to gain career-enriching exposure.
“Writing contests offer more than bragging rights to those courageous enough to enter,” the BCLF website states. “It offers invaluable visibility, opportunities for publishing deals and access to an industry that often feels like its ranks are closed to the not-yet initiated. Writing prizes open doors, boost confidence and are the chance for underrepresented demographics to make it.”
This year, participants are invited to explore the complexities and challenges of modern life through fiction stories of 3,000 words or fewer. In the contest brief, organisers set the tone for the entries, describing a world in perpetual state of socio-environmental unease and a pressing need for hope:
“Each year it feels like the world is confronted by a new challenge, tilting on its axis towards one trouble or another. Seasons shift, people fade, the rhythm of the tide of our lives ebbs and flows. Rumours of shrinking coastlines, whispers of rising sea levels grapple for our attention with as much fervour as beribboned children to the limbs of their parents and guardians.
“Our hands fan the dying embers under coal pots, or grip, white-knuckled, the steering wheels of foreign-used cars as it snakes slowly in lines of traffic jam that seem in direct odds with island lives. Across the oceans, we sow the seeds of our history into foreign soil while we ruminate over the questions the privilege of distance affords. Our hands feverishly attempt to wave life and meaning into the ordinary—into the mundane…”
The competition includes two categories: the BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writer’s Prize for unpublished writers of Caribbean heritage residing in the United States or Canada, and the BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean, open exclusively to Caribbean writers who reside and work in the region or are on temporary assignment overseas. Both prizes aim to empower writers by providing them with access to broader literary networks and resources.
The BCLF contest judges will assess submissions based on traditional criteria such as grammar, craft, and narrative, but they will also consider each story’s depiction of Caribbean identity. The panel examines the ‘Caribbeanness’ of an entry by questioning, “To what extent can we believe or visualise or sense instinctively that this story is told by a Caribbean person?”
“While fundamental rules of grammar apply, writers are encouraged to submit stories using Caribbean creole registers, or Nation Language, as the legendary Kamau Brathwaite called it. We hope to see an uptick in robust, moving stories told by Caribbean writers who are unconcerned by the expectations and standards of an alien gaze,” the BCLF explained in an exclusive statement.
The deadline for submissions is July 1, 2024, with the winners announced just before the festival in September.
More About the BCLF Writing Contest
The BCLF began this contest in 2019, initially focusing on Caribbean-American writers. Due to the high number of entries from the Caribbean, the contest expanded in 2020 to include both regional and diaspora writers, with two separate prizes.
The awards are issued in the name of BCLF patron and Trinidadian-born writing legend Dr. Elizabeth Nunez, a best-selling author and Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College–CUNY. She is the author of acclaimed books such as Boundaries (2011), Not for Everyday Use (2014), Even in Paradise (2016), and Now Lila Knows (2022).
For more information on the contest, including prizes and eligibility, visit the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival website. Interested participants can stay informed about contest updates and related events by following the BCLF on social media (FB, IG @bklyncbeanlitfest) or by signing up for their newsletter on the website www.bklyncbeanlitfest.org.
To register for the contest, click here.
