“Deus É Bom” by Damaris Enola Pinheiro Ricalo, from the Industrial and Commercial School of Mindelo (Cape Verde) is the winner of the 1st edition of the international short story competition “My language, my story and my destiny”. The announcement was made this Thursday, 25th, in the city of Praia.
In second place was “A Missão dos Guerreiros da Nzinga”, by Lemuel Paiva de Oliveira Muginga, from Instituto Médio de Luanda (Angola) and, in third place, “A Voz da Terra”, by Marlena de Jesus Almeida, from Escola Café ( East Timor).
An Honorable Mention was also awarded to the short story “Minha Língua, Minha História e Meu Destino”, by Soraia Gomes Cabral, from Escola Secundária Pedro Verona Pires (Cape Verde).
According to the IILP, given the quality of the work presented, the promoters will launch an anthology with the seven best participating works that will be made available digitally to all interested parties, focusing on the youth of the PALOP and East Timor.
The literary competition was launched on May 30th of this year and aims to promote the Portuguese language at the level of Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP) plus East Timor among secondary students and similar students.
The competition, as stated by the same source, also aims to promote youth literature among young audiences and society in general, “in addition to empowering new writers engaged with new causes of development through an international competition, it also seeks to raise awareness of potential new writers of the Portuguese language among the general public and encourage an introspective look among young people in relation to their culture and the reality of the country”.
The organizers of the competition believe that with this competition they will discover hidden talents who could become writers in their countries and who knows, perhaps reach an international scale.
This project was financed by the International Institute of the Portuguese Language (IILP) within the scope of the Small Projects Support Fund.
