Bank Windhoek reaffirms its steadfast commitment to the arts as the official sponsor of the second Bank Windhoek Doek Literary Awards. The Bank’s Executive Officer for Marketing and Corporate Communication Services, Jacquiline Pack, shared this news on Tuesday, 16 May 2023 in Windhoek. She expressed Bank Windhoek’s continued support of the awards, with the total backing ranging from N$ 400,000 to date.
In line with Bank Windhoek's active role in the world of arts, Pack recommitted the use of the Bank’s wide national footprint across the country through its branches, social media platforms and website to reach wider audiences and garner submissions for the awards from talented minds all over the country.
The awards, which celebrates Namibian talents in the arena of writing (fiction and nonfiction), poetry, and visual arts, were created by the Doek! Literary Magazine (Doek!), an online literary magazine produced in Namibia and founded in 2019 with the primary goal of creating a diverse literary culture in Namibia.
The Magazine’s co-founder, Rémy Ngamije, called the awards a "literary tradition that Bank Windhoek helped kickstart." He said that the Bank’s support helped build and maintain the momentum of the awards. Ngamije expressed gratitude for the support he says enables authentically Namibian stories to be celebrated and reach wider audiences.
The Bank Windhoek Doek Literary Awards are prestigious and highly coveted within the arts community. Namafu Amutse, the 2021 Visual Arts Category winner, said there had been an increase in the support and interest in her work, which has led her to exhibit in cities such as London and Dubai. Her work was also featured in Lolwe, a Kenyan-based literary magazine. She is, to date, the only Namibian visual artist to have her work published in Lolwe.
The primary eligibility for entry to the 2023 Doek! Literary Awards is to be Namibian, whether in the country or the diaspora, and share a piece of art in at least one of the four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual arts. If an entry is published, the artist is added to the awards automatically. There will then be a shortlist of 12 artists, three in each category, who will each receive different prizes while each winner from the categories is awarded the grand prize of N$ 5,000. The awards will consider publications for the two previous and the two upcoming editions of Doek!, giving two more opportunities for entry.
The Bank Windhoek Doek Literary Awards will take place in November, and the months leading up to this will have engagements for information sharing, ensuring as many people are reached as possible.
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