Why I Withdrew My Short Story From The 2024 Caine Prize

Literary gatekeepers never fail to espouse their so-called reverence for the art of writing while ruthlessly seeking every and any avenue to disrespect writers.

When you're a writer, people expect you to wallow in a sludge of eternal gratitude, even at risk of suffocation. They expect that you be grateful for being published, grateful for being commissioned, grateful for being shoddily edited, grateful for getting paid a paltry sum, grateful when knavish publications deduct bank transfer fees from said paltry sum, grateful you've been selected for a fellowship with questionable contractual terms, grateful that your work has been submitted for an award. 

When you're a writer, gratitude is the elevator that gets you to the next floor of a once stellar building on the verge of collapsing onto itself due to lack of investment, chest-clenching irreverence, crippling nonchalance and vanishing attention spans. Many who enter this building do so with effervescent dreams and hopes, only to have them snuffed out by a literary ecosystem fixated on bleeding gratitude out of writers. Rapacious publishers and TV studios alike milk writers out of their copyrights, draft spirit-shrinking contracts, withhold pay in breach of said contracts, demand extra work without compensation, all with the view that writers remain humble and grateful for the privilege to be exploited in the name of work. Those who dare advocate for better terms or outright refuse extra work for no pay are quickly dismissed as I have on different occasions.

To be a grateful writer is to indulge in fawning self-abnegation and teeth-gnashing silence. It's to engage in an insidious form of artifice that ultimately breeds resentment within and encourages disdain among literary gatekeepers who never fail to espouse their so-called reverence for the art of writing while ruthlessly seeking every and any avenue to disrespect the artist. Given the grim scenario, certain writers snap out of their reverie upon learning that gratitude, like exposure, doesn't pay and that, like familiarity, gratuitous gratitude only begets contempt for their craft. 

Having reached that conclusion years ago, I had no qualms rebuffing supercilious literary types like the founder and editor of Lolwe magazine, Troy Onyango, who has shown an unabashed willingness to disregard contractual agreements with impunity.

In late January, Lolwe published my short story Green Is the Colour, a story they later asked to submit to the 2024 Caine Prize. Per Lolwe's contract, they are to pay contributors within four months of publication via bank transfer or PayPal. I chose the former option, emailing Troy my bank account details on March 8. Then on June 10, I emailed him to inquire about the delay in payment. He replied four days later asking if I had a PayPal account or knew anyone who owned one as he had "some issues with bank account transfers."

I replied:

Hi Troy,

Unfortunately, I don't have a Paypal account or know anyone who has one. What issues are you experiencing?

He wrote back:

We can only make transfers to a UK bank account or PayPal. Please find one of those and I’ll make your payment within minutes. I have publicly documented our struggles with sending payments to Nigeria so if you want to know the challenges we are experiencing, there's whole articles on this online or you can check my Twitter page.  

Let me know once you have a UK Bank account or a PayPal account. 

I didn't care for the tone of his email and said that much in my response:

Troy, you didn't indicate any of these issues ealier (sic). It's been months since I sent my invoice and there's no time you stated Paypal as a payment option. 

Also, I don't appreciate the tone of your email asking I read up on your documentation of your struggles sending payments to Nigeria or that I check Twitter. FYI I'm not on Twitter nor do I have time to camp under your account.

It's been five months since you published my story and the contract states payment would be made within 3 (sic) months of publication. So you are going to find a way to pay me my money. I have written for other UK based publications who have had no problems sending money to me via bank transfer.

A flurry of back and forth emails followed, including one with a long explanation about the difficulties he's experienced transferring funds to Nigeria and another ending with a diktat that I get a PayPal account or open a bank account in the UK. 

For my part, I reminded him that the contract never stipulated a UK account as a condition for payment and that I had the option to choose between PayPal and bank transfer. I also reminded him that he was not only in breach of contract but had also received my invoice since March 8 and should have brought up the challenges before the timeline for payment elapsed.

What's more, I demanded why he hadn't updated Lolwe's submissions page to inform potential contributors residing in Nigeria about the so-called payment issues with bank transfers. Troy neither issued an explanation nor apology for breaching the contract. Instead, he cavalierly suggested voiding the agreement and deleting my story from Lolwe as if doing so resolved his failure to uphold his end of the contract.

To be sure, voiding the contract and removing my story would mean immediate disqualification from the Caine Prize given the prize only accepts entries from publishers submitting on the writer's behalf. Obviously, his suggestion was a subtle threat, a bullying tactic designed to silence me. 

But I refused to be silenced or bullied by an ethically challenged editor, one with no regard for the writers who give life to his literary outfit. Moreover, I was not about to let Troy carry on with the delusion that he had done me a favour by entering my story for a literary prize worth £10,000.

Three days later, on June 17, I informed via email Troy to void the contract and delete my story from Lolwe with immediate effect. On his lack of transparency and deception, I wrote:

You accept stories from Nigeria, let them marinate for months on your site, get eyeballs on the site thanks to these stories, keep quiet about the so-called payment issue, only to pipe up when asked about your failure to pay…

Any principled editor would have informed potential contributors of payment difficulties (or some other relevant issue) on their site's submission page, so they are aware from the get go. That you haven't done that up till now shows you’d rather contributors remain in the dark so you can continue reaping the benefits of publishing work from Nigeria without paying for it. Let's see how long your scam lasts.

I also forwarded my email correspondence with Troy to the Caine Prize, asking they withdraw my story:

I have asked Lolwe to void the contract and remove my story from their site as I have no desire to lend any legitimacy to Troy and his magazine in the event I'm shortlisted. As a result of these unforeseen changes and per the Prize's rules, I ask that you withdraw my story.

It's truly galling that a literary website profiled in the New York Times as one of several new magazines shaping Africa's literary scene would stoop to such disgraceful levels. It's quite pathetic when emerging African literary magazines and publishers—struggling for relevance amid a sea of established heavy weights—act with such breath-taking insolence towards writers without pausing to consider the impact of their unprofessionalism on their nascent existence. Rather, high on the fumes of their flimsy gatekeeping powers and megalomania, they expect writers to show gratitude at every turn no matter the cost to their craft or wellbeing. They conveniently forget the uptick in visitor numbers to their websites when organisations like the Caine Prize name them alongside shortlisted writers. They wilfully forget that writers lay the golden eggs feeding their relevance, without which they would fade into nothingness.

So who, then, should be grateful to whom?

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