Another Year Flies By

Don’t you just love the weekends? It’s a precious time to spend with family, hanging out among friends and attending numerous events. For us, every first Saturday of the month means Ayamba Meet & Greet. 

It is the opportunity for us to meet the awesome members of our community, introduce one of the great minds accelerating change in our society and inspire us to reach out and attain our own dreams. 

Last Meet & Greet of the Year

For the month of December, we will be combining Meet & Greet with our annual anniversary celebration.

The day will kick off with a live-streamed interactive chat with our guest that’s long deserved of being in the spotlight. He’s a convener of the arts that puts the young at the forefront of his organisation’s activities.

Meet our Guest

Eugene Shichet Yakubu

Eugene Shichet Yakubu is an alumnus of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Creative Writing Workshop. He has been shortlisted for the Gerald Kraak Prize, Writivism/Koffi Addo Prize for Creative Nonfiction, and his novel manuscript on the theme ‘Writing Gender‘ was also shortlisted for the 2021 Huza Press/Goethe Institut Writing Residency.

Eugene curates and organises art and creative writing programs in Northern Nigeria. As a volunteer, he teaches literacy and creative writing to inmates and students in marginalised communities. His work often revolves around the relationship between body and identity as well as the borderland between power and intersectionality. 

Eugene Shichet Yakubu holds an MA in English literature from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. You can reach out to him on Instagram @yeugene_, Facebook @Eugene Yakubu and Twitter @EugeneYakubu.

Ayamba LitCast Anniversary Celebration

The Day is Celebrated

We’ll be adding another notch to our years in operation, providing insight, inspiration and entertainment in equal measure. We haven’t quite celebrated like this before but we are confident that this day will be remembered.

The Contest

The first thing we need to cover is this year’s anniversary contest. They’re one constant during our celebrations that our family has come to expect, with an ever-changing theme and medium every time. Last year, our Rebirth submissions revealed the trials, tribulations and triumphs of a year spent recovering from the brunt of COVID-19. 

The theme for our 2022 Anniversary Contest is a bit weird. Creativity. This year, we will have you all writing works of flash fiction within a short time frame during the live anniversary event. That’s right, no time for revisions, editing or friend and family reviews. Exciting, right? 

Players will pick three random keywords from the bowl of mystery, our repository for all the concepts and ideas we love, forming your theme. With these words, they will have to come up with and write a compelling story quickly. Entries from adults and children are allowed, so long as they submit eligible stories.

Contestants will have only 15 minutes to write their tale of fiction before all submissions will be collected and read by Halima Aliyu. All attendees will then be allowed to cast a single vote for each story read. The story with the highest score wins. 

Story submissions must be a hundred words or less, written in English in a legible script. Any story longer than the required number of words or without an ending will be disqualified. 

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

I’m sure you’re wondering how long our shortlist will be. Only the three best stories will win a prize. In the case of a tie, a panel of three judges will determine the winner. 

Rules

• Pick only three keywords. No more, no less and no replacements. 
• Story length should be no more than 100 words. 
• Contestants have only 15 minutes to write their stories. 
• They will be given 5 minutes to think about the story they would like to write. 

Cheating

Each contestant must be the author of their story. Those that write unoriginal stories will be disqualified. Also, story submissions should not be the result of collaborations between attendees as they must be written solo.

Award Ceremony

Our contestants aren’t the only winners though, as Ayamba LitCast will be awarding prizes to a few of its partners for the contributions they’ve made in helping us achieve our mission. 

If you’re a regular attendee of our monthly Meet & Greet, then you already know who they are, but you’ll have to wait for the D-day to confirm. 

Just Dance Tournament

VersusNG and their Just Dance sessions have become a permanent fixture in our monthly Meet & Greet, so no celebration would be complete without our community boogieing down to cool tunes with fun steps.

For our 3rd anniversary (the second since they joined the family), VersusNG will be hosting a Just Dance tournament to see who among you has the precision and style to win the title of ‘Best Duo’. Yes, you read that right. The Ayamba Meet & Greet Anniversary DanceOff will have players compete in teams of two for cool prizes.

Keep it locked to the VersusNG and Ayamba LitCast social channels as we will be sharing the tournament rules, prize info and more at a later date. 

Even More Games

Can’t have a proper celebration without fun pressure-free activities, so we’ve got a lineup of casual games for all of you that prefer to shy away from competition. We’ve got you covered. 

Not just to read and write

Ayamba LitCast has grown to become more than your regular literary organisation. Beginning as a champion of international literacy, we continue to transform into a home for all forms of art and share them with an ever-growing worldwide audience. That’s what we call progress, the kind that is important to a global society.

With the holidays fast approaching, we wish to begin the festivities early. One last event to be thankful for each other and the community we’ve built together. To our mentors and mentees, creators and dreamers, newbies and enthusiasts, we appreciate your support and look forward to an even better year. 

Thanks for being awesome.