Has Guyana Prize helped emerging writers living and writing in Guyana? (Pt 1)

Dear Editor,
I wish to respond to Mr Al Creighton’s letter captioned: Al Creighton responds to Guyana Prize Critics, published in sections of the media.
In my letter pertaining to the Guyana Prize, which was also published in the media, I dealt with some issues, the first of which I quote below from my letter dated May 18, 2018.
”The deadline for submission to the Guyana Prize was March 31st, 2017, with the Awards Ceremony slated to be held in July, 2017. We are now into May 2018, about ten months past the awards ceremony due date, and writers are still waiting to be informed by Mr. Al Creighton, Secretary and Administrator, of the Prize shortlist and Awards Ceremony date in blind hopes.”
May I now say we are in July 2018, one year since, and Mr Al Creighton has failed to address why this incompetent Prize for Literature is now a year after submission deadline and ”no awards ceremony” has been held? And he has the temerity to compare this flawed prize with international Prizes.
I also addressed the issues, wherein I gave a thesis that judges are becoming entrants and entrants are becoming judges. Mr Creighton, in his reply to me, makes a defence as follows:
”Rev. Cecil misquotes the rules from the international IMPAC Dublin Prize for Fiction to support his claim.
“It is basic commonsense – in fact, it is a sine qua non in any literary prize — that no one can be a judge and a contestant at the same time; no one can be a member of the prize committee and enter his work in the same competition. That is standard practice: those rules do apply in the Guyana Prize, and have never been violated” (Al Creighton, Guyana Chronicle, July 5th, 2018).
I did not misquote the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and its rules state: “A book shall not be eligible for entry for the Award if the author or translator thereof is any of the following: (1) A member of the Board of Management; (2) A member of the staff of Dublin City Council; (3) An officer or employee of IMPAC Ltd; (4) A member of the judging panel; (5) A parent, spouse or child of any of the foregoing.” (The rules and regulations should be integrated into The Guyana Prize for Literature Brochure.)
Mr Creighton is saying to the Guyana Literati and writers who submitted entries that it’s ok to be an entrant one year and a judge the next year, winning the award all the time in a monotonous revolution.
”Here are persons who have been winners of the Guyana Prize and who have also served as judges at different times – never at the same time. This is standard practice in the large international literary prizes, and we have made this correction before in the press.”
My concern is as follows: It’s the same Judges who were entrants, winning the Prize all the time up to four or five times. No award in the world would ever allow such an unscrupulous act, but ‘The Guyana Prize for Literature’ does. Mr Creighton accepts that the Guyana Prize Brochure has no such regulation to bar former judges from entering for the award. I believe such regulations should be integrated into the award brochure.
A former Judge of any literary award knows the literary criteria by which an award is judged. Doesn’t the fact remain that they were fully aware of the literary criteria by which the contest is judged, and this helped them to write books to suit the judges’ criteria, and thus emerge as winners?
Doesn’t the fact remain that because they are known to the other judges, this gives them an advantage over other entrants?
Only a few Guyanese writers living and working in Guyana have won the prize. The awards are going to Guyanese who have been living overseas for over 30-40 years.
Has the Guyana Prize for Literature helped emerging writers living and writing in Guyana? The answer is: no. Writers living and writing in Guyana don’t have a publishing house here to help them get their works published. That is the reason the overseas-based Guyanese writers are winning the prize all the time, because their books are properly edited and published by international publishers, and they have already won several international literary awards abroad. So how can our local writers compete with these fully established and recognised writers? Writers who won the Guyana Prize here are not even 0.3%; that is very sad.

Regards,
Reverend Gideon Cecil