[1] It is administered by the Bessie Head Heritage Trust.
The Trust was established in June 2007 to promote the life and work of Bessie Head.
The goal of the award is to help preserve Bessie Head's legacy in Botswana, and to encourage the development of Botswana literature in various genres in English.
Reasons given include the withdraw of the financial sponsor Pentagon Publishers; and a lack of organization to handle the large number of submissions.
[2] They announced "We intend to resume the Literature Awards as soon as this is possible, hopefully in 2013.