Elizabeth-Irene, two others win Burt Award

Saturday, April 30, 2011 (The Mirror Pg 47)

By Rebecca Kwei
“The more you read, the more you know” is a popular saying which the august gathering at the British Council for the launch of the Burt Award Winning Books made even more pressing as speaker after speaker emphasised the need to invest in books, revive creative writing and put information on Ghana on the shelves and stands globally.
For Prof Ablade Glover, Director of the Arts Alliance Gallery, what was more refreshing was the fact that, “we are seeing African writers tapping into our own African dreams and aspirations.
“A very special place of honour must be accorded these men and women who today are devoting time and energies to write for us, particularly young minds, and helping in a major way to win these young minds from the lures of alien cultures currently swallowing us, well almost”.
He expressed the hope that the award winning books will be made available for the young and that “when they are made available they will not lie on the shelves untouched, but they will be read and read copiously”.
Prof Glover urged policy makers to formulate policies and programmes that will plant African efforts in literature firmly in the educational system.
The President of the Ghana Writers Association (GAW), Mr Kwasi Gyan -Apenteng, who chaired the function said it was the position of the association and like-minded bodies like the Ghana Book Publishers Association to send a request to the government to institute a policy that will ensure that government buys a minimum of 1000 copies of every book published in Ghana that passes a quality threshold.
He said the association was keen on being part of the educational agenda of the country and has started a schools outreach programme which showed that many schools have Writers Clubs.
Consequently, Mr Gyan-Apenteng said the association would re-launch a magazine, Takra, which used to be a GAW literary publication in the 70s to encourage young writers to publish their stories, poems and reviews.
Again he said the Ghana Literary Awards would be revived.
The Deputy Director General of the Ghana Education Service, Mr Charles Tsegah, said the ministry would collaborate with the Ghana Book Trust to provide some of the copies of the winning titles for school libraries to complement efforts being made under the Ghana Education Service’s National Literacy Acceleration Programme (NALAP) to improve the reading skills and habits of the youth.
The Executive Director of the Ghana Book Trust, Mr Robert Amoako, said Bill Burt established the awards after he had visited some African countries and saw the need for relevant reading materials.
The Burt Award honours, which is co-ordinated by the Ghana Book Trust, supports the writing and publication of excellent young adults literature by and for Africans. It is sponsored by CODE, a Canadian NGO, with support from a Canadian Philanthropist, Bill Burt.
The awards are restricted to authors who are Ghanaian citizens and resident in Ghana.
For the maiden edition of the award, Elizabeth-Irene Baitie won the first prize with her book The Twelfth Heart. She received GH¢16,000.
Kwabena Ankomah-Kwakye’s The Deliverer took the second prize of GH¢8,000 while The Mystery of the Haunted House written by Ruby Yayra Goka received the third prize of GH¢4,000.
Mr Amoako said the trust had purchased 3,000 each of the three award winning books to be donated to schools and libraries across the country.
He said as part of the Burt Award, the trust also organises training for writers and editors to improve their capacity to write.
The awards have also been established in Tanzania and Ethiopia.