Etisalat Writers Prize 2014 shortlist out

They announced the shortlist for the Etisalat Prize for African literature yesterday. Those in the running for Africa’s first major Pan-African literature prize are the following writers;

• Bom Boy by Yewande Omotoso (Modjaji Publishers)
• Finding Soutbek by Karen Jennings (Holland Park Press)
• We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (Little, Brown and Company/Chatto & Windus UK)

These names were chosen by judges Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola the Chair who is also professor at the University of Witwaterstrand, Sarah Ladipo Manyika a writer and academic and Billy Kahora the Managing Editor of Kwani Trust. It must have been an arduous task for these ladies and gent to have to wade through the books in the longlist in picturesque Casablanca Morocco. I would have been quite happy to take that bitter pill from them but sadly for them it was their cross to bear.

The winner will be unveiled at a big do in Lagos on Sunday, the 23rd of February 2014. They will be going home with a cheque of £15,000, an engraved Montblanc Meisterstück and will attendThe Etisalat Fellowship at the prestigious University of East Anglia, mentored by Professor Giles Foden, author of the Last King of Scotland.

I’m hoping for a win for Bom Boy. Its the only one I have read on that list and it was awesome.

You can keep up with the Etisalat Prize on their Facebook or Twitter accounts.