We at A Long House are delighted to announce our call for applications for the 2025 Rajat Neogy Editorial Fellowship. It is to continue in our commitment to foster editorial talent in Africa that we are putting out this call yet again, the third since the fellowship was founded in 2021. We hope to keep developing and expanding the fellowship through the years, inspiring and nurturing a robust community of editors in Africa and its diaspora.
We consider editing a vital part of a vibrant literary ecosystem, as great editors not only polish writing but also elevate and define it. They help writers see more clearly the paths their work is skirting or vaguely gesturing at, surrounded, in a manner of speaking, by jungly growth, and help them cut through with greater dexterity. They leave any piece of writing wiser, richer, and more capacious, able to hold within it the largeness and complexity of experience. This is work that must be undertaken with the utmost seriousness, itʼs a space whose filling must not be abandoned to the arbitrary flow of things.
This is why A Long House encourages Africans who love literature and the art and discipline of editing to apply for the 2025 Rajat Neogy Editorial Fellowship. And it is instructive that for the fellowship, we follow in one of the finest traditions and lineages of editing on the continent, begun by Rajat Neogy, the founder and editor of Transition, one of the most reputable literary magazines to come out of Africa. Founded in Uganda in 1961 when he was only 22, Transition, under the editorial guidance of Rajat Neogy, went on to publish some of the finest writers from Africa—Chinua Achebe, Es’kia Mphalele, Wole Soyinka, Bessie Head, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, among others—sometimes for the very first time.
This fellowship is a way to honor his work, dedication, and memory. Transition as an institution (now under the aegis of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University) alongside Rajat Neogy’s family have agreed with us that this is an important history that needs to be preserved. The rigour and insight he brought to editing are touchstones for us as we continue in his footsteps.
And so again, we encourage Africans who care about literature and quality editing to apply for the 2025 Rajat Neogy Editorial Fellowship at A Long House.
Here’s how it will work:
Applications are open from October 5th – 30th, 2024.
Fellows for the 2025 tenure will be announced in December 2024.
There will be a $1000 award for the fellowship, a tote bag of books, and a period of mentorship with a select writer or editor of repute.
Fellows will work with A Long House throughout the one year tenure of the fellowship, at the end of which theyʼll be expected to produce a chapbook of no more than 35 pages.
The chapbook will be conceived and edited by the fellows, and it could be a work of essays, poems, or fiction, or a creative blend of all of these. The fellows will edit, not write the chapbooks. For the chapbooks, the fellows will be allowed creative freedom. This means they can have the chapbooks incorporate or make as its subject criticism, theory, photography, or art.
Eligibility
All who are applying:
Should be between 18 – 40 years old.
Should be Africans residing in Africa.
Must demonstrate a deep interest in African literature and the ecosystems that nurture it.
Responsibilities of the Fellows
Work with founding editors on editing works of contributors.
Manage communication with contributors.
Oversee publication schedule and curate a monthly newsletter.
Suggest and reach out to new contributors.
Work with founding editors on themed issues.
Work with A Long House team on the Long Talk and A Short Talk series.
How to submit
To apply, please upload a motivation letter of not more than 500 words along with your CV as a single pdf on Submittable.
