We want it all – we want to laugh, we want to cry, we want to get angry, we want to channel the things that make us angry, we want to feel, we want to connect, we want to communicate.
The thing we would say to hopefuls as we enter the 20th year since Wadadli Pen first launched, and launch the 2024 Challenge season, is don’t forget that story is a spectrum.
As many colours and angles of light as there are in nature, more can exist in story; so imagine something new and particularly you. That’s what we want.
The submission window is now open and will remain so until February 16th 2024. We hope you’ve been writing all along but, if you haven’t, now’s the time to tell your story.
Write from within you and your world. Don’t even check the guidelines (at https://wadadlipen.wordpress.com/wadadli-pen-2024) until you have your first draft down; write free.
Be sure to check those guidelines before you submit though, just to make sure you’ve dotted your t’s and crossed your eyes (sic).
We hold these truths to be self-evident, creating is its own reward and artists deserve to have their creations valued. Both true. Which is why Wadadli Pen Inc non-profit is gathering gifts.
So far for 2024, we have returning patrons the Best of Books bookstore, Carib-World Travel, the Cultural Development Division – Antigua and Barbuda, E. M. Grimes-Graeme, Harper Collins (UK), Moondancer Books/Floree Williams Whyte; and first-timers Dotsie D. Isaac, a past judge, Zavian Archibald, and Zoë Mercedes Teague.
We share this to thank them and also to encourage others to put han’ not just for our season but for our year round mission to nurture and showcase the literary arts in Antigua and Barbuda.
It’s not a hand out, it’s putting your hand in on youth, arts, and community development. You can also give your time as a volunteer or intern. Check the Wadadli Pen 2024 tab on our Wadadli Pen blog for details.
Back to you, the resident Antiguan-Barbudan creative of any age, we look forward to reading your spectrums of colour and light wrapped in poetic, story, and graphic ‘novel’ form.
Categories include winners write (a category open to all past winners), incentive (a prize for almost-winning writers), and our finalists will come from winners in the 12 and younger, 13 to 17, and 18+/adult categories from which a main prize winner will be chosen.
Send them to us, online only, at https://bit.ly/wadadlipen2024
