How to win?
Read the current publications on the SprinNG website for September 2021.
Write a comment on 2 or more of the publications posted on the website for September 2021.  

Please add your name and email address when filling the comment box. 
​Note: Email address will not be made public.
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See the guide to providing good feedback below
TIPS FOR WRITING GOOD FEEDBACK
The goal of providing feedback is:
1. to invite another reader into the world of beauty you have seen in a work
2. to provide a very brief summary of what you read
3. to give your interpretation/perspective of what has been written
4. to provide suggestions for improvement

We encourage that your comment meets at least 2 of these goals.
The SprinNG team will evaluate the comments and select the winner of the book at the end of the month.

Note: Comment on the poems, book reviews, articles, interviews and guest posts.

Visit www.sprinng.org/advancement-fellowship to learn more and apply. The deadline is October 10.
 
The SprinNG Advancement Fellowship (SAF) is a self-paced (4 weeks) programme that helps develop career content and improve your professional communication skills to attain academic and career goals. The fellowship covers six core courses: Resume Writing, Cover Letter Writing, Personal Statement Writing, Interview Preparation, Answering Interview Questions, and S.M.A.R.T Goal-Setting.​

Fellowship participants are provided concise learning materials including videos, worksheets, short guides, and assignments to build their career portfolio for pursuing opportunities like jobs, internships, fellowships, university admissions, and more. They will receive feedback and guidance from SprinNG to perfect their career content and stand out.

Application for the 2021 SprinNG Women Authors Prize is closing soon: September 30, 2021!
 
To Learn more and apply, visit: www.sprinng.org/swap

The SprinNG Women Authors Prize (#SWAPng) ​will select a Nigerian Female Author annually - someone who has published a full-length book in print and invest N200,000 in purchasing, distributing, and marketing print copies of her book nationwide through our independent book reviewers, sister literary websites and events whom we collaborate with. 

Ugochukwu Damian Okpara, Nigerian writer and poet, is the author of the poetry chapbook, I Know the Origin of My Tremor (Sundress Publications, 2021). He is an alumnus of the SprinNG Writing Fellowship and Purple Hibiscus Trust Creative Writing Workshop held annually by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. His works appear or are forthcoming in African writer, The Masters Review, Ruminate, The Penn Review, 20.35 Africa, and elsewhere. In 2019, Ugochukwu was the 1st Runner Up in the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize. He was also a contributing interviewer for poetry in Africa in Dialogue.

i know how violence is packaged like a souvenir in a man’s throat / i’ve seen its silhouette once or twice or maybe thrice around my father’s Adam’s apple / today /  i wake to it in another man’s throat / still / the birds on my window squeak / as though to say / this pain isn’t entirely yours to mourn or even yours at all / true / in this picture / there’s a woman next door whose voice mirrors mine / i think i know how bruised a voice could be / but i have no idea how to make a ghost of it / in the next picture / there’s me / alone / save for the birds / still the violence dancing through the man’s throat waltzes through me / till i become a boy running from home again & again / in the re-imagination of self / let’s begin by saying / that my memory is a fog / & all my life / i’ve known men to leave water droplets behind it  / even when i still cannot see my reflection / this is why i live in old wounds /  & still running / desperately picking old pieces of myself from my father / brother / & sometimes the men who called me sissy / i want to believe that i am worth knowing / this is why i’m home to every pain i behold

self-harm like cutting behaviours:
 
my body is a shame inflicted on me
when i say me; i mean the girl in me
i cut myself open to set her free
i swear! this is far from suicide
i am only a cartographer
with knives, i make maps on my thigh
every wound is a road leading to death

• in the club, you danced like fire, spilled your grief like gin, while i, in a room knotted my body into all rigid things to becloud my thirst for men.

 

• fear knows how best to sit in a room, knows how to shrink until it ripples into your body.

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• you danced & flickered like candlelight, tried so hard not to lean into a boy’s arms & mourn all the things eating queer boys up.​