28 Oct 2015

The American Embassy in collaboration with Poetavango have awarded six best short fiction writers who performed exceptionally well in the creative writing competition.

 The winners walked away with cash prices while some were awarded books and some gifts. Amongst the winners, three were school children who participated in the inter-school creative writing competition and three were out of school youth who battled it out in the Poetavango award for short fiction.

In the interschool creative writing category, Mpolokang Bontsibokae scooped position one followed by Florence Seabe while Lame Lubinda got position three respectively.

In the Poetavango award for short fiction, Wadza Lopang emerged the champion and walked away with P3000, Jimmy Keletso got position two and was awarded P2000 while Sharon Tshipa become third and pocket P1000 respectively.

Giving a keynote address during the award ceremony, an official from the American Embassy, deputy public affairs officer, Ms Elena Andreotti said they do a lot to promote culture, art and educational programs through funding grants.

She revealed that the embassy offers cultural/arts programs designed to enhance mutual understanding among the people of Botswana and the United States of America.

She said for the past three years, they had been supporting Maun International Arts Festival which provides a platform to value the work of visual artists in Botswana and the United States of America and expands networking opportunities between Batswana and American artists.

Ms Andreotti also noted that they intend to bring an English Language professor who would work with school children, teachers and education officials to enhance teaching and learning of the subject.

The chairperson of Poetavango, Legodile Seganabeng said that they realised the need for upcoming writers to be nurtured.

“We realised that there were few books by Batswana writers hence we wanted to give writers hope through such awards because some of them are very creative and write powerful pieces hence the need to develop and nurture them,” he added.

He also revealed that the creative writing competition was open to all and had been running well noting that in future they would have local prominent writers.

Seganabeng, popularly known as “Dread X” in the art industry is also a well-known writer, who had the opportunity to share with the audience some of his written pieces.

He would soon publish a book titled “Josie” early next year which talks about the strength of a woman. He informed the audience that determination and hard work pushed him forward to achieve his dreams of being a writer.

Seganabeng stated that most of his pieces cover things he experienced in life. Dread X works was published in DRUM - the South African popular magazine . ENDS