Dear Editor,
The Guyana Prize for Literature 2016 Awards brochure which was published in the Guyana Chronicle on January 8 has many flaws that need correction and clarification.
In the Poetry category it makes reference to “a collection of poems or one long poem by a single author.” It did not say how many poems should be in this collection ‒ a collection can be 5, 10, 15 or 20 poems, etc. It should have said a collection of 30 to 200 poems, or whatever number they are looking for. It also mentioned “‘or one long poem.” Now what is meant by a long poem? How long must this poem be ‒ 50 pages or more? A long poem can also be several cantos of about 300 lines.
Under ‘Fiction’ it refers to a novel or collection of short stories by a single author. Here again it did not say clearly how long the novel should be, or if it should be 30,000 to 100,000 words, etc. Similarly, for the short stories it did not say how many stories should be in the collection and how long one story must be.
In the case of ‘Drama’ the requirement is a full length play. How many Acts make up a full length play, or how many pages long should it be? Many writers are at a loss here pertaining to the amount of work to collate for submission here.
In the case of unpublished manuscripts which may be submitted by an author resident in Guyana, here again, it did not say anything about the length of the manuscript in terms of pages.
A note, ‘Clarification on Manuscripts’ says that revised unpublished manuscripts and manuscripts previously submitted which have now been published will be accepted. I totally disagree with this because many authors won this award already with unpublished manuscripts, for example, Ruel Johnson who won twice. The rule gives a former winning entrant the right to now publish the manuscript which won this award and then to re-submit the same old manuscript (now published).
The award is open to works published between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2016. Published and unpublished manuscripts are judged the same, so this rule should apply to resident writers and publishers submitting both published books and unpublished manuscripts within the same time frame. To accept a previous manuscript that won this award before and that has now been published would be unfair.
The deadline is March 31, 2017. It should be extended to June 30 to facilitate resident writers to prepare their manuscripts for submission. Manuscripts should be judged in a separate category.
I also believe that short-listed writers should be given at least a US$1000 dollars and a Certificate of Merit as many other international awards like the Booker Prize and the T S Eliot Poetry Prize, among others, do.
It is my sincere hope that these queries I raised here will be addressed and that past judges of this award will not become entrants this year and the awards will not be given to a society of friends.
Yours faithfully,
Gideon Cecil
