Submission is expected to end on Friday, May 29, 2020 at 1600 hours.

The awards scheme is to review literary works and assess the level of progress being made by writers in the country and also promote excellence in literary works.

The award ceremony is scheduled for Saturday, November, 14, 2020 on the theme: "Honoring Literary Excellence".

Ms Doris Adabasu Kuwornu, Chairperson of Ghana Literary Awards Committee said literary works would be assessed by distinguished literary personalities after which three winners from each category, namely; The Ultimate Awards, First Runner-Ups and Second Runner-Ups would be collated and declared.

Names of the three finalists for each category would be announced in the media and in GAW's newsletter, as well as other social media platforms, three days ahead of the awards event.

Award winners will each receive a cash prize, certificate and an insurance cover from Millennium Home Insurance, Ms Kuwornu who is a Member of the Ghana News Agency Board of Directors stated.

In all, entrants will be competing in 12 Award Categories namely: Novel (Ayi Kwei Armah), Short Story (Ama Ata Aidoo), Poetry (Atukwei Okai), Children's Story Book (Efua Sutherland), Children's Poetry (Kwesi Brew), and the Creative Non-Fiction (Kofi Awoonor) and Staged Drama (Efo Kodzo Mawugbe).

Others include; Video and Audio Spoken word named after Kofi Anyidoho, Video and Audio Script writing (Kwaw Ansah), Ghanaian Language special award (Kate Abbam), Science and Mathematics Textbook Writers special award (Jophus Anamuah-Mensah and Francis Kofi Ampenyin Allotey).

The Young Writer category (Bill Okyere Marshall award) is for writers not more than 25 years.

Aside these categories, Ms Kuwornu said there would be special awards including "Achievement Awards" which is the highest Association-wide Award presented to member(s) in special recognition of outstanding contributions to literary works and the arts.

The second is the "Distinguished Service Awards" to honour those who innovated new Association programmes, managed the Association's functions or promoted the Associations areas of literary interest to the larger community.

Ms Kuwornu, who is also the Vice President of GAW noted that the awards was opened to literary works by Ghanaian authors or anyone resident in Ghana for at least three years and entries were allowed for literary works on any subject or theme.

However, she cautioned that entries must be original and published in Ghana or abroad between January 2017 and December, 2019.

"Preferably, all works must be in English, except for works entered in the Ghanaian language special award category, and submitted by the Bureau of Ghana Languages (BGL)."

"It should also be accessible to the reading public, but collections of short stories, poetry, essays by multiple authors or essays in newspapers, magazines, online or previously published and compiled into book format were not eligible," she added.

Ms Kuwornu said revised editions of works submitted in a previous years were eligible for entry and a contestants were at liberty to submit different works in different categories for the competition.

She said participants were required to submit three copies of their works and advised them to keep a copy of their entries, however, submission of the same work in more than one language in the same award period would not be allowed.

"All works submitted in the Competition would be retained by GAW. However, the Committee or GAW shall also not be held responsible for any entries that are lost or damaged in transit. All disputes, claims and causes of action would be settled by the Awards Committee."

Dr Francis Kwesi Gbormittah, President of GAW lamented that the Association was faced with various challenges that impeded their activities.

The challenges involved financial issues, poor publicity, and poor standard of literary work produced by writers, among others.

Dr Gbormittah a Board Member of Ghana News Agency called on government and other cooperate bodies to support them to broaden their scope of activities.