By Yunus S Saliu
The name of winners of the Covid-19 Short Story Competition organized by the Writers Association of The Gambia (WAG) in collaboration with the National Centre for Arts and Culture was Friday announced in a brief ceremony held at the National Centre for Arts and Culture in Banjul.
The organized Covid-19 Short Story Competition was part of the National Centre for Arts and Culture’s efforts used to support the development of the creative industries amid of the coronavirus pandemic during the State of Public Health Emergency. Also, the competition helped young writers to respond to the Covid-19 through short stories to raise public awareness about the spreading virus.
The three emerged winners of the competition received some cash prizes as follows: The overall winner – Ismaila Ezobe Saidybah went home with D3000 cash, Pa Nderry Sohna who come second received D1500 cash and Saihou Ngallan third position got D1000 Cash while the runner-up Ayesha Imran won the President Cherno Omar Barry prize and received D1000 cash, too. The final award ceremony to all the winners and shortlisted writers for the competition is scheduled for mid of the month.
However, according to the WAG, all submitted stories for the Covid-19 Short Story Competition are copyrighted and will be registered with The Copyright Office of The Gambia. More so, all individual stories remain the property of the authors.
The presentation of cash prizes to the emerged winners was witnessed by some of the country’s big authors, WAG executive’s members and young authors. While Dr Cherno Omar Barry, president of WAG, Hassoum Ceesay, Director General NCAC, Ramatoullahi Outhman and Michael Hamadi Secka delivered speeches.
Meanwhile, the competition extends the NCAC’s overall mission to archive the wealth of Gambian literary production from getting lost in the chaos of the global crisis of Covid-19. As it helped the young people, storytellers and aspiring writers to stay informed about global trends in the Gambian literary scene.
And it also ensure that the significance of their works transcends the final moment of their stories in an anthology book, as they will all be published without exception.