Nigeria’s leading e-publisher, OkadaBooks has teamed up with one of the country’s biggest financial institutions, Union Bank of Nigeria, for a writing competition eligible to only undergraduates of the Nigeria's tertiary institutions. 

Entry to the Campus Writing Challenge, worth N960,000 total cash prizes for winners is free and will be judged by two winners of the NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature: Chika Unigwe and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim.

The contest, which is focused on discovering students with raw, bold and creative writing talents as well as providing them with the necessary exposure to hone their craft and become master storytellers, is expecting each entrant to submit only one story based on the adult genre of adventure, romance, and sci-fi, and that's between 3,000 - 5,000 words via Union Bank’s Website.

The submissions which was opened on 27th of August, will be closed on 7th of October, 2018.

The winning entry will receive a cash prize of N500,000, while the first and second runner up entries will receive N200,000 and N100,000, respectively. 

The contest will also reward 4th best and Audience Favourite entries with N50,000 cash prize each, while the best designed short story cover will go home with N60,000 cash prize.

The winning and shortlisted entries to be announced in December this year, will be sent to top publishing houses in Nigeria for a chance for the winning students to ink publishing deal. The entries will in addition be published in the 1st edition of the Collegiate Anthology to be compiled by OkadaBooks.

About the Judges:

Chika Unigwe has published short fiction in several anthologies, journals and magazines, including Wasafiri (University of London), Moving Worlds (University of Leeds. She won the 2003 BBC Short Story Competition and a Commonwealth Short Story Competition award. In 2004, she was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing. She won the 2012 Nigeria Prize for Literature; She sits on the Board of Trustees of pan-African literary initiative Writivism, and set up the Awele Creative Trust in Nigeria to support young writers.

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim debuted a short-story collection The Whispering Trees that was longlisted for the inaugural Etisalat Prize for Literature in 2014, and shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing. Ibrahim has won the BBC African Performance Prize and the ANA Plateau/Amatu Braide Prize for Prose. He is a Gabriel Garcia Marquez Fellow (2013). He won the prestigious NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature with his debut novel, Season of Crimson Blossoms in 2016. He has also won the Michael Elliot Award for Journalism, the BBC African Performance Prize, and the Goethe Instut/Sylt Foundation African Writer’s Residency Award, and has been shortlisted for the Brittle Paper Anniversary Award. 

To enter for the Campus Writing Challenge, click HERE TO ENTER.