Cover Reveal: Long road to a travel anthology
By Pelu Awofeso
This anthology of travel stories has been a long time coming. Sometime in 2005, I launched a travel writing competition with N25,000 for the winning entry.
“If you have found a particular part of the country — street, market, city, historical landmark, restaurant, garden — so good and wished you shared the experience, here’s a unique opportunity,” I said in the call I sent out at the time. “Just about any travel experience will do. Show us — in 1000 words of descriptive, fun-to-read and engaging article — what a traveller’s delight Nigeria is.”
Christened “New Prize for Travel Writing”, I don’t recall receiving any submissions. If I did, they must have been few and none was good enough to win the top prize.
Then, in 2016, I tested the waters again. This time, there were encouraging submissions and a couple of interesting travel narratives. After weeks of sorting through the submissions, a judging panel shortlisted the top three: the winning entry (Uche Akolisa) and the first runner-up (Loretta Iloh) are included in this collection.
I repeated the call for entries in early 2021 and received even more submissions. Then, earlier this year, I revisited the idea that birthed the competition in the first place: to publish an anthology of travel stories — written by Nigerians about travels in Nigeria. And so I went probing past editions of waka-about, my now-rested travel newspaper-magazine.
I found gold.
A good number of the stories in this collection are from that publication, and also from Travu — my new online travel-focused platform. For the rest, I reached out to the authors themselves. I hope you not only enjoy reading this collection, I hope it inspires you to take your own journeys as well.
The 24 stories in this one-of-a-kind anthology show what it feels like to travel in different parts of Nigeria — north, east, west, and south.
Whether it is exploring the ancient walls of Kano, observing the annual Osun-Osogbo Festival, travelling through historic Zungeru, spending a weekend in Obudu, or reflecting on a road trip to Ikot Abasi, the stories in this collection are as diverse as they are revealing of the subjects and places they are about.
Publication date: 14 February 2024
Scan the QR code to Pre-order One for the Road (and read a 56-page preview). Or use this link: https://bit.ly/OFTRpreorder
For enquiries + bulk orders: (+234) 817 5909 300 (WhatsApp messages only)
