If you ever had a story bubbling in your heart like water from a spring. The sweetness rolling over your head onto your naked skin, like in a shower at midday.

If the sound of the rushing dialogues, the gripping plots, the mournful tears of a victim and the exhilarating laughter of villainy thrills you. You’d be able to appreciate the depth and deliberateness of intent with which writers channel creative forces to the hilt of a pen, the tapping of keys on the computer.

It’s with this pensive beating of the heart, pulsating of the tip of the tongue, throbbing of the jugular veins, that we present our winners for the June 2019 Collins Elesiro Literary Prize.

Ademuyiwa’s The Orange Tree does exactly what you would expect it to do with oranges, but not how you would. Resoketswe, in Help!, directs her theme in an almost paradoxical way. Spoilers, spoilers, we think. The joy of reading themed magazines is finding out, beyond what a story says, why the story is included. And this, is what we desire that you get by leafing (or flicking, as it appears) the pages of this magazine. – Michael

Emmanuel (Chief Editor)

The winners in order are:

WINNER

THE TASTE OF HOME BY CHINENYENWA FAVOUR CHUKWUMA (nonfiction)

Prize: N60,000 Naira Cash, Digital Publishing Deal with cfwriterz (worth N60,000), Free Write App License, and Appearance in the June 2019 Freedom Magazine.

FIRST RUNNER UP

THE SILENT PLEA BY RESOKETSWE MANENZHE (fiction)

Prize: N25,000 Naira Cash, Digital Publishing Deal with cfwriterz (worth N60,000), Free Write App License, and Appearance in the June 2019 Freedom Magazine.

SECOND RUNNER UP

HOME-BOUND DANCERS BY UGOCHUWKU NWAFOR (poetry)

Prize: N15,000 Naira Cash, Digital Publishing Deal with cfwriterz (worth N60,000), Free Write App License, and Appearance in the June 2019 Freedom Magazine.

All other longlisted and shortlisted entries will be published in the magazine which is now available for download. Click here to download the Magazine.