Category Archives: Awards

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Short Sharp Stories Award to feature at Mzansi’s National Arts Festival

Henrietta Rose-Innes

The “Short Sharp Stories Award” for South African short-story fiction curated by Joanne Hichens is presented each year by the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.

The awards create a publishing platform for both established and emerging writers in South Africa. The winning writers have their stories in an annual anthology of selected stories with a theme set that differs from year to year. In 2013 the theme was Bloody Satisfied with the collection of slick and sexy stories brimming with danger and elements of the sinister making the cut. In 2014, the anthology was called Adults Only and it had a range of modern sex writing.

Makhosazana Xaba

This year the anthology to be published June 2015 will be themed around the Incredible Journey and will include stories dealing with a road trip, or futuristic ride, or a journey of the mind. The judges are Henrietta Rose-Innes, Ken Barris and Makhosazana Xaba.

Xaba most recently won the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award. She was joint winner with

Ken Barris

Reneilwe Malatji. Rose-Innes who recently won a handy award is an acclaimed and award winning author, and twice winner of the Caine Prize. Barris is an award winning author, who most recently won the University of Johannesburg Prize for his novel Life Underwater.

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Nigeria Prize For Literature 2015 Calls For Submissions

Sam Ukala was last year’s prize winner

So you know that the biggest prize in African literature is the Nigeria Prize For Literature right? Well it is. The worst part for the rest of us is that only Nigerians are in the running for the prize money; a whopping US$100,000. Lucky Nigerian people.

The prize gravitates around different genres of literature; prose fiction, poetry, drama and children’s literature. Last year the winner of the moolah was Sam Ukala in the drama category.

So the organisers of this years edition of the award have made a call out for submission. This year the prize is all about the kids as the genre being considered is children’s literature? The judges for this years edition will be Prof Uwemedimo Enobong Iwoketok who is chairing alongside Prof Charles Bobunde and Dr Razenatu Mohammed.

So if you want in then I suggest you send your 6 copies of your work as well as an e-copy if available, along with evidence of Nigerian citizenship (sob, where is the Pan Africanism) to;

The Nigeria Prize for Literature,

External Relations Division,

Nigeria LNG

INTELS Aba Road Estate,

Km 16, Aba Expressway,

PMB 5660, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria.

The work may be submitted by either author or publishers with the deadline being April 3rd, 2015. Good luck my Naija people.

You may also go here to keep up with information on the event. Or just keep coming to this blog. We’ll keep you up to date.

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Jalada Prize for Literature 2015 Longlist announced

Hawa Y Mire Photo/hawaymire.com

The people at the Jalada collective has announced the longlist for its inaugural Prize for literature. This edition of the prize is offered only to the best stories published in the Afrofuture(s) anthology. The longlist includes;

  1. “Last Wave” by Ivor W. Hartmann
  2. “eNGAGEMENT” by Richard Oduor Oduku
  3. “Discovering Time Travel” By Suleiman Agbonkhianmen Buhari
  4. “For Digital Girls Who Drink Tonic Water at the Bar When Purple Rain Isn’t Enough” By Ytasha L. Womack
  5. “Black Woman, Everybody’s Healer” by Hawa Y. Mire
  6. “Where Pumpkin Leaves Dwell” by Lillian Akampurira Aujo
  7. “Onen and his Daughter” by Dilman Dila

The winners to be announced on March 31st will be going home with Kshs 30,000 (USD 330), number two getting Kshs 15,000 (USD 220) and third Kshs 10,000 (USD 110)

P.S. You know that bloggers are up in that story (I know, I’m the guy who did his own Africa39 list) and our favourite Ghanaian lit blogger has her own Shadow Jalada Prize Longlist you need to check out.

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Teju Cole, Helon Habila, and Ivan Vladislavić get paid! #WindamCampellPrize2015

Helon Habila

We have a winner or rather a list of winners for the Winham Campbell Prize 2015. And just like last year when Aminatta Forna was feted, there is an African in the list. In fact this year there are three; Teju Cole, Helon Habila, and Ivan Vladislavić all who are writers of fiction. The first two are Nigerian and the latter is the South African.

The prizes were announced by Peter Salovey, the 23rd president of Yale University, at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library yesterday. They will be receiving their prizes at a ceremony and literary festival at Yale from 28 September to 1 October, 2015.

Teju Cole

Teju Cole is well known here in Kenya with his stints at both the Storymoja Festival in 2013 and 2014. He also has two books to his name Open City (My review) and Every Day is for the thief.

Habila hasn’t come to Storymoja yet but its only a matter of time right. His books include Waiting for an Angel: A Novel (2004), Penguin Books, New Writing 14, (2006) Granta Books. (co-edited with Lavinia Greenlaw), Measuring Time: A Novel (2007), W. W. Norton, Dreams, Miracles, and Jazz: An Anthology of New Africa Fiction (2007) and Pan Macmillan (co-edited with Kadija George) Oil on Water: A Novel (2010), Hamish Hamilton. He is also guy behind Parresia Publishers which has an imprint that introduced a crime fiction contest that gave us Blessing Musariri.

Ivan Vladislavić

Ivan Vladislavić is a South African short story writer and novelist of Croatian origin. You can find out more about him here.

So how much will they be going home with at the festival? The recipients, chosen for fiction, nonfiction, and drama, each receive $150,000 unrestricted grants. You can read more about the process used to select them here.

Congratulations y’all.

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Countdown to the Caine Prize 2015 shortlist, workshop in Ghana

Zoë Wicomb: Over to you and your team

The Caine Prize folks have announced their entry tally for this years shortlist and its a big number; 153 entries. Its a huge number if you consider that all these entries are from publishers in the African space. It is actually a record for the fifteen year old highly rated prize.

With the prizes in, its now the time for the judges, chaired by award-winning South African author Zoë Wicomb announced last year, to do the work of whittling down this number to five as is the tradition with this prize.

This year the new Weston Library in Oxford, UK will be the one to host the Caine Prize award ceremony as one of its first official functions in Blackwell Hall on Monday 6 July.

Alongside the announcement of the numbers of entries, the organisers of the prize has announced that the annual Caine Prize work shop will be hosted this year in Ghana. The workshop for those not in the know are usually for writers who have been shortlisted for the Caine Prize and other talented writers who have come to the Prize’s attention through the selection process.

So expect to see 12 writers from different African countries convene in Ghana, the home of the Afcon losing finalists, for ten days to read and discuss work in progress. They will be learn from two more experienced writers, who act as tutors or animateurs.

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The PEN International/New Voices Award 2015 entries sought

Edwige-Renée Dro

The PEN International/New Voices Award 2015 is now open for business. The award provides a much needed space for young and unpublished writers to promote their work. The award actively encourages entries from diverse linguistic regions and communities and is open to unpublished writers aged 18-30.

The young writers must be nominated by their local PEN Centre as PEN International cannot receive entries directly from candidates. I expect that Pen Kenya chairman Khainga O’Okwemba email will be blowing up in the next few days until the deadline of May 22.

This years awards will be judged by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel from Guinea and Edwige-Renée Dro from Côte d’Ivoire. There are other judges. Laurel is one of the Guinean intellectuals of most international prominence, widely considered the most distinguished among a group of writers in his country. From 1999 to 2008 he was editor-in-chief of magazines El Patio and Atanga (Equatorial Guinea). He has published in all literary genres and is the recipient, for some of his books, of prizes in both national and international awards, such as Third Prize for Narrative with ‘El Desmayo de Judas’ (Judas Faints) in the ’35th International Odón Betanzos Palacios Award’, organised in 1999 by the New York Circle of Iberoamerican Writers and Poets. He has been Joseph Astman Distinguished Faculty Lecturer (Hofstra University, New York, 2003.)

Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel

Edwige-Renée Dro is one of the Africa39 gang and has been short-listed for the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship. her stories have been published in Prufrock magazine, Prima magazine etc. She blogs at laretournee.mondoblog.org, a France24 and RFI platform where she looks at her country through the eyes of a returnee. Edwige lives and works in Côte d’Ivoire as a translator.

So all you 18 – 30 years olds I suggest you have at it. You could be like Masande Ntshangafor his winning entry “last year’s competition.

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Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor makes Folio Prize 2015 shortlist

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

In December last year I wrote a blog about The Folio Prize, the first major English language book prize open to writers from around the world published in the UK. When I mentioned it the interest for me was that there were three Africans on the list: South African author Damon Galgut, Ethiopian born Mengestu Dinaw and Kenyan Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. I was quite please for the three.

Last night the people from Folio announced their short list and I was even more happy as Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is on it for her debut novel Dust (My review here). She is still in the running to be the next winner of the title Folio Prize winner which comes along with a cheque for £40,000.

This is not her first prize as she was the winner for the Caine Prize in 2013.

Folio Prize 2015 short list

The shortlist in full

10:04 by Ben Lerner (Granta)

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews (Faber)

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill (Granta)

Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (Granta)

Family Life by Akhil Sharma (Faber)

How to Be Both by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)

Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín (Viking)

Outline by Rachel Cusk (Faber)

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Jalada Africa announces new literature prize

Anne Moraa to Judge

Jalada Africa reminds me a lot of that cartoon Pinky and The Brain. In that cartoon, The Brain is a mouse who plans to take over the world. Pinky is the mouse who messes up all his world domination plans. The only difference between the people who run the Jalada Collective and Pinky and The Brain is that they don’t seem to have the “Pinky” that messes up everything.

After conquering the editorial game with three anthologies all within the space of a year, the collective has set its sights on the awards segment of the lit game as they announced the inaugural Jalada Prize for Literature. They will use the typical system for these prizes with the Longlist announced in February and the winner announced in March. Those eligible for the prize were published in the Afrofuture(s) anthology that came out in January but in future I’m being told anyone can enter.

The winner goes home with Kshs 30,000 (USD 330) for their winning story, and second and third bank Kshs 15,000 (USD 220) and Kshs 10,000 (USD 110) respectively. Judging the awards this year are Moses Kilolo, Stephen Derwent Partington, Abdul Adanis , Kiprop Kimutai, Anne Moraa, Clifton Gachagua, Okwiri Oduor, Richard Ali and Sofia Samatar.

For more information about the prize please the visit this link.

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Chimamanda Adichie influenced album nominated for Grammy awards

Chimamanda Adichie.

The biggest music awards on the planet are the Grammy Awards. Musicians world over look out for those as a nomination on your resume shows that you are at the top of your game as a person in that most important of industries. The organisers of these prestigious awards have announced the people in the running this years shebang. Here is one of the nominees for the Album of the year for 2015;

Beyoncé

Beyoncé

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Drake, Jay Z & Frank Ocean, featured artists; Ammo, Boots, James Fauntleroy, Noel “Detail” Fisher, Jerome Harmon, Hit-Boy, Beyoncé Knowles, Terius “The Dream” Nash, Caroline Polachek, Rey Reel, Noah “40” Shebib, Ryan Tedder, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Key Wane, Pharrell Williams & Patrick Wimberly, producers; Boots, Noel Cadastre, Noel “Gadget” Campbell, Rob Cohen, Andrew Coleman, Chris Godbey, Justin Hergett, James Krausse, Mike Larson, Jonathan Lee, Tony Maserati, Ann Mincieli, Caroline Polachek, Andrew Scheps, Bart Schoudel, Noah “40” Shebib, Ryan Tedder, Stuart White & Jordan “DJ Swivel” Young, engineers/mixers; Tom Coyne, James Krausse & Aya Merrill, mastering engineers

Label: Columbia Records

If you look keenly at that list you will note that there is a name that is very familiar to many people who read this blog. Have you seen it yet? Let me put you out of your misery; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie aka CNA.

If Beyonce, a well known American singer gets the album of the year grammy, which includes a treatise on feminism that was borrowed from CNA’s We Should All Be Feminists Ted talk, you can expect to see “Chimamanda wins Grammy Award stories trending.” We’ll keep you posted.

The is Flawless which was influenced by CNA

This is the original We Should All Be Feminists TED talk

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One African fiction writer will go home with US$40,000 in November

I am getting news of a new opportunity for African writers who engage in fiction to win some extra dosh with the inaugural FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Awards.

The new awards are aimed at recognising extraordinary artistic talent in three categories – fiction literature, film-making and art across more than 100 emerging market nations. The winner in each category will receive a prize award of $40,000 and will also be featured in a post event magazine and videos profiled on ft.com.

For Africans the category you are eligible for is in writing of fiction. To qualify you must provide proof of residency or a copy of their passport and you must come from any of the following nations;

Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo DR, Congo, Rep, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, West Bank and Gaza, Yemen and Zambia.

Basically the whole continent. Submissions were opened on 30th January and they close on 10th April. The winners will be announced at a special gala dinner event at the New York Public Library on 5 October 2015. Have at it here.