Celebrating African Women Narratives, Elevating Emerging Voices
Sokoto, Nigeria – July 27, 2025 —Sokoto Book and Arts Festival (SOBAFest), organised by Book O’Clock and The Poetry Club UDUS, is proud to announce the return of the Queen Amina Short Story Prize, an annual key feature of the Sokoto Book and Arts Festival.
Now in its fifth year, SOBAFest continues its commitment to nurturing literary talent and promoting culturally rooted storytelling, inspired by artists across and beyond Northern Nigeria. The Queen Amina Short Story Prize is particularly inspired by the legendary Hausa warrior queen, Amina of Zazzau, it is dedicated to spotlighting bold, imaginative, and powerful short fiction featuring women and gender related issues across northern Nigeria and beyond.
Theme: Intersectionality
We are interested in stories that navigate the tension between meeting points. Stories of girls/women whose lives intersect across identities. Stories of girls/women whose realities reflect the complexity of girlhood/womanhood. What does it mean to be a girl amidst gender norms that attempt to replace this definition, and what does that tension translate to when merged with other societal demands, such as in tribe, religion, sexuality, class, and dreams? Writers are, however, invited to explore narratives that interpret this theme freely. See the theme concept note for further inspiration.
Submission Guidelines:
● Open to girls and women residing in Sokoto
● Submissions must be original, unpublished short stories up to 1000 words, having a strong female character.
● Send the file in a docx format to sobafest@gmail.comattached to the body of the mail
● The Subject of the mail must be “Submission for Queen Amina Short Story Prize—[Title of your story]
Prizes:
● Winner – ₦50,000 and publication
● 2nd Place – ₦30,000 and publication.
● 3rd Place – ₦20,000 and publication.
● Shortlisted entries will be considered for honorary mention
Submission Deadline: August 13, 2025
Festival curator Zaynab Abdulrazaq emphasises that the competition is “a call to young female storytellers to reimagine memory, identity, and legacy through fiction that dares to question and reframe the stories of women and the issues surrounding the gender.”
The Queen Amina Short Story Prize is more than a contest, it is a celebration of resistance, cultural rootedness, and radical imagination. As SOBAFest 2025 approaches, this competition promises to add depth and diversity to a festival already rich in cultural heritage and contemporary artistic expressions.
For more information, follow @soba_fest on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter), or email sobafest@gmail.com.
About SOBAFEST
The Sokoto Book and Arts Festival (SOBAFest) is a literary and artistic festival that brings together writers, poets, artists, and cultural enthusiasts in Sokoto, Northern Nigeria and beyond. It is an initiative committed to amplifying underrepresented voices and preserving the richness of Northern Nigerian culture through literature, performance, and visual art.
