Stories That Make a Difference by Jackie Kay, Chair of Judges 2014

I am in Ullapool right now, a beautiful town surrounded by hills on the edge of Loch Broom in the north west of Scotland. At the book festival here I was asked if stories make a difference. I said something bland like that I hoped that my stories might hold up a mirror to the reader's life but that I thought writers were deluded if they thought stories could make a difference to the world we live in. Then a woman came up to me later and said, “Your stories made a difference to me.” She had suffered a brain injury and had only just been able to start reading again, and found that the short story form was something she could contain.  My stories were the first things she'd been able to read after five years of not reading.

The short story is such a fascinating hybrid form. It shares the poet's particular love of image or lyricism, of not wasting a single word, with the novel's wide narrative lens. It takes people often at a moment of change or trauma and distils and invests that moment with something wider, something that in turn helps, by the narrowing of focus, to understand the wider world. It is wide open. It has stretched across the continent. It is the perfect form for our time. It can be carried around in the head, the whole story. You should be able to lay it down on a vast plain and it would still glow.

We were inspired this year by the range of subject matters in the Caine Prize short-listed stories, the different approaches to this pioneering and inventive form.  During our judges meeting we returned again and again to what made a story work for us and what stories made a difference. Was it because we believed the character's voice? Was it the style and tone? Was it the structure of the story? Was it because the story can be philosophical? What is it we were looking for in the stories? We were looking for different stories. Fresh, inventive, surprising. We were looking for stories that make a difference.

Caine Prize Reflections by Bella Matambanadzo

Bella Matambanadzo

No writer worth her salt would turn her nose up at the opportunity to take part in the Caine Prize for African Writers'Workshop. Being included in a group of 12 published and promising writers from 6 African countries whose short stories are produced into an anthology that sees 8 publishing houses work together is not the sort of gift an author receives everyday. I am looking forward to seeing the final collection stitched together. Its themes of place and belonging, of legacies and futures are inspired as much by our everyday experiences on the continent we call home, as they are by the places elsewhere that we visit, either in the flesh or through the magical realm of our imaginations. 

We will be published by local book houses in Zimbabwe,Zambia, Uganda, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. Off the continent, we have publishing deals secured in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Our work may additionally be translated into French, the first time the Caine Prize is doing so for its annual anthology. I hope this is the beginning of an expansion in the languages formally associated with the Caine Prize. Perhaps in future collections will be published in Kiswahili, Fulani, Wolof, isiXhosa, Hausa and Africa's many other languages, that given the global nature of where Africans live in today's world, and where our works are read, would mean an expansion of readings and writings in our very own tongues. 

As a creative artist and thinker the precious gift of time to focus on the craft of writing and re-writing is something that I will cherish for many, many years to come. Time with other writers who serve as a loving group of peers, giving feedback and reactions to work that goes from draft to final version in less than ten days. The writing escape is organised in a formula that permits you to write what you want and share it firstly with other writers through daily reading sessions. Artistic independence is a hallmark of the workshop. You can either accept, or reject the feedback given you. Experienced editor/mentors offer one-on-one sessions where they see your words and suggest what works, what is incomprehensible, and where improvements can happen. Nothing is off limits. We were guided, urged in fact, to stretch our creative imaginations and push down traditional literary boundaries, break up and recreate language and show no respect whatsoever for prepositions.

I came back with 6 complete stories. The one that will go into the Caine Prize collection, and the 5 others that I am presently submitting to other publishers who have asked for stories. In terms of output that means I wrote a story every two days. The other writers were even more productive, knocking out stories and ideas more adeptly. We met as strangers, and we left with a sense of camaraderie that means although there will eventually only be one winner for the £10,000 prize announced at a ceremony this July because we shared so much as writers, listened to each other's ideas an stories, edited for each other, had great laughter together the collection honours us all. In the end we will all be winners because we worked as a team and everyone brought the best of themselves to our writer's retreat held in the perfect peace of Leopard Rock Hotel in the Vumba, Zimbabwe.

The visits to schools in the surrounding community brought us face to face with young writers, almost 800 of them spread across four different schools. Schools that have produced many of Zimbabwe's most profound literary achievers. At Hartzell, we could taste and feel the atmosphere evoked and immortalized in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions. At St Werburgh'smission school we read what the students in the young writers club were crafting in their journals: poems, short stories and songs that they plan to publish in a newsletter.    

Back in Harare at the City Library we saw traditional literature coming into contact with tech experimentation. Zimbabwe's geek generation, and yes, it really exists far away from Silicon Valley, is building apps for books to stream via mobile phone. My aspiration now is for writing opportunities, and publishing prospects to expand in Africa, rather than diminish. I have found a thirst for books so rare here that it reminds me that literature is by no means dead. It's gaining a new morphology.

A shorter version of this article was published in Harare News. 

A visit to St Werburgh school in the Bvumba by Bryony Rheam

The Bvumba is a special place for me: as a child, my family spent many holidays there and I have lots of special memories of long walks through the jungly terrain, sitting next to a huge open fire in the evenings and watching the mist rise as the sun came up in the morning.  In 1981, we lived for a year in Penhalonga, not far from Mutare along the Mozambican border.  I remember going to school in a very old bus, chugging up Christmas Pass and then that wonderful sense of almost freewheeling it down the other side into Mutare where I went to school.  It was a time of great transition in Zimbabwe: black children were allowed into what had predominantly been white government schools, and many white people were leaving for places such as South Africa and Australia.  The war in Mozambique was still in full force and, for all that we were so near, we may as well have been on a different planet.  The only interaction we had with the country was through the itinerant border jumpers who came across to sell the food aid they had received from West Germany: tins of fish which they couldn’t open. 

Years later and here I was in the Bvumba once again, attending a Caine Prize workshop.  Towards the end of our time there, we were divided into groups of four and sent off to different schools to give a talk about our writing. St. Werburgh is situated on the Burma Valley Road, on the other side of the mountain that dominates Leopard Rock.  It is an Anglican school, started in 1897, but it receives no funding from the church.  Originally situated on white commercial land, from whom it received some financial help, the school is now on its own, relying on US$25 a term school fees from its 900+ pupils.   

The other groups of writers went to secondary schools to give talks whereas we were invited to speak to the primary school’s Young Writer’s Club, a group of 8-12 year olds.  That the school had such a group was of great interest to me as an English teacher.  From my own experience, such clubs are attended by few and usually run out of enthusiasm quite quickly.  However, the 40 or so children who all trouped into the classroom to meet us proved that this was a writing club with a difference.  Luckily, it is headed by teachers who are keen to teach and share their ideas with the children in their care. 

We were shown their writing books in which they had recorded details about their families- many of them are being brought up entirely by their mothers – and about trips away to a nearby waterfall and the museum in Mutare.  They had also written an imaginative story; one about a rat who ate the back of a man’s coat sticks in my mind.  The man wore the coat, not knowing that the back was missing and everyone laughed at him as he walked down the road!  

What really struck me as I read the children’s work was how good their English was.  I work at a private school in Zambia where school fees are between US$3000-5000 a term (depending on if they are primary/secondary and boarding/day-scholars) and yet the standard of English is incredibly poor.  The pupils I teach are not all first language English speakers, but they all speak English at school.  At the age of fifteen, they struggle to hand in an essay which is more than one side of an A4 page long and which has a clear beginning, middle and end.  Yet these children in a remote government school in Zimbabwe have already got to grips with the basic structure of a story.   

Another thing which impressed me was the ease with which the children could stand up and recite poems to the audience.  Not many students I teach could do that from memory or they would mumble and look self-conscious and try to slink off without being noticed.   

It is a generally accepted fact that if anyone wants to be a good writer, they have to be a good reader. I give talks to parents about the importance of reading to their children because more and more children are writing within a vacuum.  They have nothing to stimulate their imaginations because no one is reading to them, including teachers, who often don’t value reading as it’s not ‘part of the syllabus’.  At St. Werburgh the problem is a different one.  They don’t have any books to read to the children.  Unfortunately, the suggestion to download free books off the internet, was not a particularly practical one in an area with no cell phone signal, never mind internet access. 

The children sang for us and we were also taken on a tour of the school before being offered mealies to eat.  On the tour, we saw the IT department and the special needs class.  There is also a class for children with autism and downs syndrome.  One of the girls is brain damaged after being hit by a car.  What I saw in the classrooms is some very progressive teaching practice.  There is a rota on the wall for cleaning the classroom; the children are taught skills such as knitting and the teacher plays music through her cell phone to provide stimulation.  She says that ideally they would like a CD player and I can feel that hint in her voice that hopes I might be the provider of such a machine.

I was impressed by the amount of pictures on the wall, some standard Ministry of Education posters about cholera and the importance of washing hands, but also handmade ones, some out of old corn flakes packets – vowel sounds and times tables.  It occured to me that the reason these children’s English is of such a good standard is because the basic teaching practice in Zimbabwean government schools still focuses on spelling rules and multiplication tables.  This is something that has been forgotten in many private schools and only recently has its significance re-emerged in the UK. 
 

Abdul Adan with children from St Werburgh school

Abdul Adan made a name for himself by learning part of a Shona song and also teaching a large group of school children who had gathered round him a Swahili song.  The area the school is situated in is a truly beautiful one and I couldn’t help envying the children for living in such an area.  However, it is also a place of incredible hardship.  Most of the parents who send their children to this school are subsistence farmers.  As they all tend to grow the same crop, maize, the price of a bucket of mealies is dirt cheap.  US$25 a term in school fees may not sound like a lot of money, but it certainly is for these people.  Some of the children faint during the school day as they have had nothing to eat all morning and the school cannot possibly feed them.

It is hard sometimes, considering the history of Zimbabwe in the last fifteen years, to understand why education is still so valued in the country.  Many of the children wrote how they wanted to be pilots or lawyers because ‘that’s how you make lots of money’.  Yet the country wide pass rate for ZIMSEC O level is 16%.  Even if these pupils do go on and get their A Levels, what then?  According to one of the teachers, the best thing to do would be to teach the pupils a skill so that they can actually do something practical, besides farming, when they leave.

Some of the children live as far as ten kilometres away, up the mountain and must not delay in their start to the long walk home.  They walk in groups as there is a danger that, especially girls, may be attacked and raped if they are on their own.  In the past, some children have disappeared, probably taken for body parts, although this hasn’t happened for a while.   

We leave after an exchange of email addresses and phone numbers.  Can I get any of the teachers a job in Zambia?  An average teacher in Zimbabwe earns just short of US$500 a month, regardless of experience and qualifications.  A government school teacher in Zambia can earn around US$1000 a month and they are often given car and housing loans. 

As we drive away, I marvel at the resilience of these teachers, people who obviously pour so much of their time and effort into teaching these children and who receive very little monetary recompense for it.  The landscape is incredibly beautiful as the car bumps and bounces down the road.  I think again of our family holidays, how there was always this feeling of security, of knowing what was going to happen.  Today I feel that we spend too much time ticking off places we have gone to.  

Holidays must always be somewhere different, somewhere exotic.  Yet there is something endearingly comforting about having a favourite place.   

It is a long time since we spent those holidays in the Bvumba and much has happened in both my family life and the life of Zimbabwe, and for me the country of my birth is a paradoxical mixture of love and incredible sadness.  I wish in many ways that the workshop had been held elsewhere, in a place with no emotional investment for me.  I think of my story that I have written over the course of the workshop.  It is sad, but it is also about letting go.  I suppose that’s what I want to do really, let go.  But in my heart of hearts, I can’t.  It’s under my skin, you see, and that’s why it’s me who can never really leave it. 

Don't you know, little fool, you never can win?

Why not use your mentality - step up, wake up to reality?

But each time I do just the thought of you

Makes me stop just before I begin

'Cause I've got you under my skin.

Yes, I've got you under my skin.

Africa39 and Caine Prize authors by Lizzy Attree

It is inspiring to read the newly released Africa39 list of the most promising writers from Africa under 40 years old and see so many writers who have been involved in the Caine Prize process recognised on that list.  

On 8th April 2014, at a breakfast at the London Book Fair, 39 writers from Africa south of the Sahara and its diaspora were revealed as the authors selected as the Africa39. Also announced was that the official anthology of their work, edited by former deputy editor of Granta, and Deputy Chairperson of the Caine Prize, Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, will be published in October 2014.

The “39 Project” aims to celebrate the most vibrant voices in literature and provides a platform to expand the conversation about the future of literature in Africa. The Africa39 Project, as part of the Port Harcourt (UNESCO World Book Capital 2014) Book Fair, will culminate in the publication of an anthology featuring new writing by selected writers from Africa, jointly published by the Hay Festival, the Rainbow BookClub, andBloomsbury. Across the world, and from 2014 to 2016, a series of events will seek to showcase the Africa39 authors, their work, and the Africa39 anthology.

How was the Africa39 list compiled?
In November 2013, Binyavanga Wainaina—2002 Caine Prize winner, founder of Kenya-based literary journal,Kwani?, and author of acclaimed memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place—took on the task of researching and compiling a list of 120 writers from Sub-Saharan Africa for the Africa39 Project. This long-list was sent to the official judges (Margaret Busby, Elechi Amadi, Osonye Tess Onwueme) who then decided upon a short-list of 39. For one month Binyavanga and his team worked to issue calls to Anglo-, Franco-, Lusophone, and Kiswahili literary writers and to publicise the project across Africa.

Early on, Binyavanga emphasised that the places on the long-list must be apportioned equitably according to gender. Also important to the project were those authors writing in African languages. In outlining “The Spirit of the Africa39 Project”, Binyavanga made provisions for writers who might be “at risk” or who, for reasons of safety or security, publish anonymously or using pseudonyms. He ensured that as many different types of writers were encouraged to submit including, “[w]riters of children’s fiction, prose fiction blogs, erotica writers, romance,” as well those who have published “writing done in Braille.” The resulting long-list was as diverse as possible, reflective of the complexity of the continent, and populated with “the wild, weird, [African] explorers of the imagination.”

Which Caine Prize writers feature on the Africa39 list?

The 17 authors involved with the Caine Prize, either by taking part in a workshop, as a shortlisted writer, or as a winner of the Prize include: 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Nigeria was shortlisted in 2002 for her story "You in America" and took part in the first Caine Prize workshop in South Africa in 2003 where she wrote the story "Lagos, Lagos" which was published inDiscovering Home.

Monica Arac de Nyeko from Uganda was shortlisted in 2004 for her story "Strange Fruit", and went on to win the Caine Prize in 2007 for "Jambula Tree". She took part in the 2005 workshop in Kenya where she wrote the story "Grasshopper Redness" published in Seventh Street Alchemy and the 2008 workshop in South Africa where she wrote the story "Night Commuter" published in Jambula Tree and other stories.

Rotimi Babatunde from Nigeria won the Caine Prize in 2012 for his short story "Bombay's Republic" and took part in the 2013 workshop in Uganda where he wrote "Howl" which was published in A Memory This Size and other stories. 

Jackee Budesta Batanda from Uganda took part in the 2005 workshop in Kenya where she wrote the story "Life Sucks...Sometimes" which was published in Seventh Street Alchemy.

Shadreck Chikoti from Malawi took part in the 2011 workshop in Cameroon where he wrote the story "Child of a Hyena" which was published in To See the Mountain and other stories. 

Tope Folarin won the 2013 Caine Prize for his short story "Miracle" published in Transition magazine.

Clifton Gachagua from Kenya took part in the 2014 workshop in Zimbabwe where he wrote the story "As a Wolf Sweating your Mother's Body" which will be published in theCaine Prize anthology in July this year.  

Stanley Gazemba from Kenya took part in the 2004 workshop in South Africa where he wrote the story "The IOU" which was published in A is for Ancestors

Mehul Gohil from Kenya attended the workshop in South Africa in 2012 where he wrote the story "Elephants Chained to Big Kennels" published in African Violet and other stories.

Abubakar Ibrahim from Nigeria was shortlisted in 2013 for his story "The Whispering Trees".  He took part in the Uganda workshop in 2013 where he wrote "The Book of Remembered Things" which was published in A Memory This Size and other stories and the Zimbabwe workshop in 2014 where he wrote the story "Lily in the Moonlight" which will be published in the Caine Prize anthology in July this year.

Stanley Kenani from Malawi was shortlisted 2012 & 2008 for his stories "Love on Trial" and "For Honour".  He took part in the 2013 workshop in Uganda where he wrote the story "Clapping Hands for a Smiling Crocodile", published inA Memory This Size and other stories and the 2010 workshop in Kenya where he wrote the story "Happy Ending" published in A Life in Full and other stories. 

Glaydah Namukasa from Uganda attended the Caine Prize Naivasha workshop in 2007 where she wrote her short story, "Then, Now and Tomorrow" which was published inJungfrau. Glaydah is the current Chairperson of FEMRITE, the Uganda Women Writer's Association.

Nii Parkes from Ghana has been a member of the Caine Prize council for three years.  He was the workshop leader for the 2014 workshop in Zimbabwe along with 2008 Caine Prize winnerHenrietta Rose-Innes. 

Namwali Serpell from Zambia was shortlisted in 2010 for her story "Muzungu" and took part in the 2011 workshop in Cameroon where she wrote the story "The Man with the Hole in his Face" which was published in To See the Mountain and other stories. 

Novuyo Rose Tshuma from Zimbabwe took part in the 2010 workshop in Kenya where she wrote the story "The King and I" which was published in A Life in Full and other stories. 

Chika Unigwe from Nigeria was shortlisted in 2004 for her story "The Secret" and took part in the 2005 workshop in Kenya where she wrote the story "Retail Therapy" which was published in Seventh Street Alchemy.

Mary Watson from South Africa won the Caine Prize in 2006 for her story "Jungfrau" and took part in the 2007 workshop in Kenya where she wrote the story "Simon Said" which was published in the Jungfrau collection.

Workshop writers visit Hartzell School, Mutare by Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende

Learners at Hartzell School

Friday March 28, 2014, Chinelo Okparanta, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim and I visited Hartzell School in old Mutare, just outside Mutare City. The school is named after Bishop Hartzell of the United Methodist Church who was the founder of the first Methodist Missionary Church in 1899 on land given to him by Cecil John Rhodes. The school was built in 1901 as a boys’ school and in 1903 a girls’ school was built. These two schools were integrated in 1924 and the students were trained as teachers and pastors so that they could spread the mission as educators and create new church communities.

Chinelo Okparanta and Abubakar Ibrahim at Hartzell School

We met with about 200 students from form 3, 4 and A-level students along with their instructors in the language and literature departments. The three of us read from our work and we discussed the importance of creative writing and the power of storytelling. 

The students asked us questions about finding their passion, how to nurture it and to stay motivated in an environment where writing is not considered a real profession. This question brought about the discussion of Zimbabwe’s perception of writers and artists and the negative stereotypes of writers as dreadlocked drunks and junkies. Dambuzdo Marechera was the primary example of what many people gave when discussing writers and we were able to show the students that there were many other writers who did not look like or behave like Dambudzo Marechera.

Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende reading

Overall the visit was enriching for us and it is my hope that the talent, energy and dreams of these young people will find expression so that the story of Africa can be told in the voices of those whose very existence is inextricably tied to this continent. The rich stories of Africa require bold and courageous voices that are deeply empathetic to the issues that have shaped this continent and its people. It also requires voices that are committed to the delicate task of placing Africa and her stories within the global context.

Abubakar Ibrahim (left), Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende (centre), Chinelo Okparanta (right)

Bulawayo's 'We Need New Names' wins inaugural Etisalat Prize for Literature

NoViolet Bulawayo’s winning spree with her debut novel ‘We Need New Names’ has continued, following the announcement last Sunday 23rd February that she was selected as the winner of the inaugural Etisalat Prize for Literature. The Prize is the only pan-African prize celebrating first time writers of published fiction books.

From an original longlist of nine novels, the judges whittled the entries down to a shortlist of three, which included NoViolet Bulawayo, Karen Jennings and Yewande Omotoso, who took part in the 2012 Caine Prize workshop in South Africa. 

'We Need New Names' was victorious, chosen by a panel of three literary experts, Pumla Gquola, Sarah Ladipo and Billy Kahora, who was shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2012. 

In addition to winning £15,000, a Samsung Galaxy Note and a Montblanc Meisterstuck, NoViolet will take part in a sponsored book tour to three African cities and a Etisalat Fellowship at the University of East Anglia, mentored by Professor Giles Foden.

NoViolet's unique writing style reached international audiences when she won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2011 with the short story 'Hitting Budapest.' 'We Need New Names' was subsequently shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize, making her the first black African woman and the first Zimbabwean to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. 

Caine Prize Material by Nathan Hensley

The entries arrived to me in a box that had been destroyed in transit.  It was a cardboard container about the size of a small TV set -- maybe two feet cubed, and heavy.  Someone must have dropped it (more than once?) during its long journey between London and Washington, DC, because holding it together now were layers of packing tape, new strapped over old.  You could see stacked papers through a split running down the side; a corner had been torn apart.  It was a massive, imposing thing, this demolished box.  My back strained as I heaved it toward my office.

I don’t think I will ever forget opening it -- I remember feeling anxious (had all the stories arrived?) but also excited (would they be good?) and, most of all, tingly with a sense of responsibility.  (Theyhad all arrived, and more remarkable, nearly all of them turned out to be gripping reads.)  It was humbling that these 100-plus stories had come to me at all.  What an honor, I thought, to have been vaulted into a group charged with doing the work of cultural consecration, separating “good” literature from “bad” and, inevitably, enforcing the standards that might determine what counts as good in the first place.  It is, to say the least, a big job. 

In a chapter called “Prizes and the Politics of World Culture,” literary critic James English explains that conferring global prizes like the Caine Prize always exposes a delicate problem.  That’s because “to honor and recognize local cultural achievement from a declaredly global vantage is inevitably to impose external interference on local systems of cultural value.  … There is no evading the social and political freight of a global award at a time when global markets determine more and more the fate of local [literary cultures]” (298).  The asymmetries of cultural and economic power that English references, familiar to anyone who follows debates about what he calls “prize culture,” resonated in my unconscious, even as my conscious mind paced through riveting stories of village life, urban violence, river journeys to rebel camps.  My double-consciousness was yet more pronounced when I read in the Library of Congress’s European Reading Room, which looks out on the U.S. Capitol, and whose ceiling lists the four universal elements -- air, water, earth, and fire -- as though it had the power to contain them all:

The Caine Prize is awarded from a center of global prestige, Oxford, but lends that prestige to writing from an area that, as many of the submissions themselves attest, can seem far removed from airy cathedrals of leisure like the Library of Congress or the Bodleian.  Reading these stories produced, in me at least, a sense of disconnection between where they took place and where I was evaluating them. 

Some of the stories were funny; many found a place for redemption; others played irreverently with form; and not a few dealt movingly with feelings of dislocation I felt I could recognize, having come from no global metropolis but a California city best known for raisins.  Some of the most polished stories conformed to the mostly unwritten aesthetic rules of consecrating institutions like The New Yorker.  Others, to my mind better, took less familiar shapes, and elaborated vocabularies and images foreign to me: a plane crash caused by magic; infidelities rupturing a patriarchal North African home; a breathless ambulance chase through an urban zone; and episodic, first-person narratives of sexual violation, unconsoled by formal resolution. 

In his own blog post, John Sutherland writes convincingly of the material circumstances that make art possible.  My broken box of African writing made such material circumstances uncannily palpable.  Some stories had been printed on office paper – 8 ½ x 11 and A4 variously— while others arrived in bound and printed formats of all sizes: in literary journals from three continents, in Nigerian glossies, in a men’s magazine published from London.  Who had sent them?  From where?   From what material situations, in other words, had these documents been imagined, composed, and typed -- but also printed, stapled, mailed?  

The most important “matter” of art is ineffable: human experience, translated into form and made legible to another human being across time and space.  To access this kind of matter you can download the stories now, from wherever you happen to be sitting.  But there is another kind of matter, too, one I am glad to have accessed, if only for a time, in the piled-up jumble of these astoundingly good submissions.  I am referring to the physical fact of the stories in their material forms.  These artworks were created in any number of countries, in who knows what concrete circumstances; promoted by editors equally various in situation; received in a small office in London by staff members; reboxed there and shipped across the ocean to be handled by innumerable postal workers, dropped, and re-taped along the way.  Finally they arrived to me: a mass paper on which the experiences of other human beings have been transformed, as if by magic, into aesthetic form -- an amazing process of connection that is also, and in some final way, physical.

Whoever wins this year’s Caine Prize will experience both immaterial and material benefits: a feeling of profound accomplishment, perhaps, but also £10,000 and (we hope) exposure to a wider audience.  She or he will also visit Georgetown, as a Writer-in-Residence at the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice.  My colleagues and I look forward to welcoming the author in Washington and to inhabiting briefly the same space with him or her.  And I hope the winner’s journey is less bumpy than that of the document that won the ride.

Reference

English, James F.  The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2005. 

A private conversation with this year’s submissions by Sokari Douglas Camp, Caine Prize judge, 2013

As an African woman and artist living in London, I have always loved reading stories about the continent, and what a privilege it has been to read the stories submitted for the 2013 Caine Prize. I was taken to so many places without getting on a plane.

I am used to admiring works of art, especially sculptures, all over the world. The museums and shows I frequent are designed to have character and to tell the viewer a story. As an observer, one takes in a lot when you see beautiful or ugly objects, one is able to imagine all sorts of scenarios as a result of what the artist and curators have created.  Taking the time to go to an exhibition or event is not as instantaneous as opening a book. The process of being a judge and keeping one’s opinions to one’s self has resulted in a very private conversation with this year’s submissions.

It has been captivating to read and concentrate on what characters are seeing and feeling.

Viewing works of art is often a public experience; it is in front of you, one can walk around or walk away. As I read the Caine Prize submissions in various locations - London, Venice, Amsterdam - it was wonderful to carry a story around with me, which I could dive into where ever I was. The descriptions of locations and textures were so vivid; when I looked up I expected to feel heat and to swipe at mosquitoes.

It was a hedonistic process to feel so much of what the characters felt; running on dusty roads and holding weapons bigger than a child’s hand - all from within the peaceful, wintery landscapes of the Western cities I visited.

My lasting memory of this batch of stories is reading about the predicament of so many girls and women on the continent. Is this the plight of my African sisters? Or is it the story of all women in the world? Survival for girls in so many of the stories was tough. In many ways it is a wonder that African women rise to the to the top anywhere in the world.

I salute these authors that have brought contemporary life and visions of the future into text. Beyond all else, it is great to be publicising something other than the Eurocentric view which is not everyone’s norm – not even in Europe. 

Interview with NoViolet Bulawayo on her recently published novel 'We Need New Names'

Former Caine Prize Winner NoViolet Bulawayo’s searingly powerful debut novel We Need New Names has been greeted with widespread critical acclaim.

She talks to Irenosen Okojie about being a writer in diaspora, her writer’s process and the importance of the Caine Prize.

Your novel is a powerful depiction of the fractured lives of children living in a shanty in Zimbabwe. How important was it to tell their story?

The book was written during Zimbabwe’s lost decade. If you follow Zimbabwean politics, that’s when the country really came undone for the first time since Zimbabwean independence. 

For me that was really shocking because I had a beautiful childhood, so to see what was happening was devastating. My family’s still back home. We’ve heard those stories of there being no food in the stores, violence because of government elections, activists disappearing, some of them turning up dead. It just became important, especially to parallel the media narrative. I was living in the west and seeing things through the internet. I felt someone needed to tell an intimate story that showed what was happening on the ground and captured the full essence of characters. Having kids really allowed me to do that, they’re kids but disconnected from what’s going on. They still lived, laughed and played despite what was happening. It became a big, necessary project for me.

Ten year old Darling as a narrator rings authentic and true. We’re reading about these children having to cope with horrible circumstances yet because it’s told through a child’s eyes there’s an other worldliness about it. How hard was it to get her voice right?                                                                                                                                   

It wasn’t hard, probably because I emerged writing through craft and the child narrator. As a creator, it’s something that I’d worked on since I started writing. When it came to Darling, I was a bit more seasoned. You have to play on your strengths and that’s what I did. I come from a culture where we just have character. Put a bunch of kids together and they shine, they survive. I had to go back to my own childhood and my childhood friends for that voice. It’s honest and that’s important. You don’t want somebody to read it and think that doesn’t sound right.

There’s bleakness in their circumstances but it’s also very funny. How did you strike that balance and was it deliberate?

I come from a place of laughter, absence of humour is not normal. Whatever we were doing, laughter was a constant dynamic in our lives no matter the circumstances. I was talking to my cousin about a recent funeral back home. And she said people were funny, even at a funeral. It doesn’t have to be depressing. I needed to make that conscious decision to remember to bring in humour. Although it was partly deliberate and partly not, that’s how I am in my everyday life. I’m not a serious person. My personality also comes through my writing, I have to be pleased. Also, I was aware that I was working from a politically charged space, very dense material. I needed to find a way to make it tolerable to read, that was important. Not just with this book. For me it’s important that whoever starts reading my work doesn’t put it down. Laughter carries you through and I have to connect to the reader. Humour allows me to do that.

The second half of the novel is set in America where Darling finds herself facing a different set of challenges. Did you draw on your own experiences?

I think all fiction is drawn from real experiences, people will tell you it’s fiction but it’s real. It’s either your own reality or somebody else’s. My moving to America is even more recent than my ten year old self.  It had to be convincing, some of my personality needed to appear on the page but also stealing from others, family, friends, people I knew. It’s interesting, when my family members read the book; I get phone calls saying so I saw such and such in the book! It’s one of those things; if it comes into my writing I don’t resist it.

What do you think the reaction to the novel will be like in Zimbabwe and what sort of dialogue do you hope it sparks?

In Zim, I have no idea. I can’t really say one way or the other but I know Zimbabweans have been reading my work. I blog, on Facebook they read bits of it. Mostly they’ve been supportive and there’s nothing like being supported by your own people. Especially now, sometimes you think they’re not reading but some of them are. In terms of reaction, what matters is that they read. I’ve written and they’ll read. Whether good or bad, as long as the work is read. My only prayer is that the work is available for people. I just went home, first time in thirteen years. I was surprised they were selling just stationery in what used to be the biggest bookstore, no books. If they’re no novels available, people aren’t accessing books and that’s dangerous. The genealogy of our literature has always been engagement. It means there’s a disconnect somewhere. I’m hopeful, people on the ground are asking me for the book and on Facebook. I’ll be releasing it in Zim so there are ways they can access it. I hope we can work something out to make the book affordable and available in libraries.

How has being a writer in diaspora shaped your writing and how do you think it’s affected your sense of identity?

It’s quite interesting that I had to leave home to discover myself as a writer. I come from a culture where I never saw writers growing up. I read books and most of the books were by western writers. But beyond that, writing was never a career option to me. You had to be a nurse, doctor, a lawyer, which I went to the US to study or an engineer. I know that being in the diaspora for me meant I was given the golden opportunity to come into myself, to study creative writing which I wouldn’t have done in Zimbabwe. I would have studied a Masters in Finance. With the cost of leaving home came the benefit of discovery. For me it was when I embraced my Zimbabweaness more. At home, it wasn’t necessary; you’re surrounded by Zimbabweans so it was never an issue. Your race is never an issue because you’re living in a space where everyone looks like you. Then going out, you realise, I’m not from here. I’m this other thing. This other thing is not always at home in a space that can be both welcoming and marginalising. Which is why I’m obsessed with my homeland in my writing. It’s certainly made me fall in love with my roots even more. I can’t find that grounding sense of identity where I am which is why when it comes to identifying myself as a Zimbabwean writer, I feel I am. I don’t just want to be called a writer. For me that identity is important, it meant survival and grounding. We’re living in a time where technology’s so prevalent. This book wouldn’t have been written without that. I was getting on Facebook, seeing people and teachers updating about what was happening back home and that fed into the whole process.

You won the Caine Prize for Hitting Budapest. How did that help as a launch pad for your career?

When the Caine Prize is mentioned, I remember I’ve spent all the money. On a serious note, it gave me confidence especially because it happened at a time when I was just starting out. In as much as I love writing and know it’s what I’m supposed to be doing but when you’re young you really think about things. You know you’re expected to be doing something that’s more secure. You live in a practical world of bills, of supporting family especially those of us in the diaspora. You have to be sensible but it showed me that I could make it.

How important do you think the Caine Prize is for profiling African writers?

It’s the biggest prize in Africa, it’s very necessary. There aren’t so many things happening on the continent itself. It’s a western prize in a sense but that doesn’t undermine it. It’s still important, whether you’re looking at people who’ve been short listed or won, they’ve gone on to do amazing things. I’d like it to be more engaged on the continent. I know there was aworkshop run which is cool. It gives people the opportunity to workshop when we don’t have a strong workshop culture. But I’d like to see a Caine Prize winner do a residency in Africa. Send that person to a school to work with kids. Young people are very impressionable and I think that would make a difference.

From Hitting Budapest, the story then evolved into a novel. Tell us about the trajectory.

It’s the first chapter in the novel so people think that it actually came first. The thing is, it actually came while I was working on the novel. It was in a different form then. When I got to Hitting Budapest, the story found its pulse. Then I had to rework the book and I reworked it a million times. Moving it forward and shaping it around these kids.

What’s your writer’s process?

I don’t have a fancy, high sounding process myself.  I try and envision a story in my head. Write as much as I can inside my head. Maybe that’s because I was brought up on hearing stories. I think of a story first versus it written down. Then I’ll write it in my notebook, edit as much as I can to get the language right. Then I bring it to the gadgets. I’m laid back and I don’t write every day. Writing isn’t always writing in terms of doing the physical act, I’m processing things in my head all the time. I’m an observer of life. I think about things and my characters. So I’m always in one way or another, involved in the process. I try not to stress, I’m not a serious person. I don’t take things seriously. There are times when I look at my work and think, that’s interesting or that could have been better! I think it’s necessary to be objective but the main thing is to enjoy what I’m doing. I enjoy it more if I don’t over think it. I just work from instincts. It’s interesting to hear intelligent people or critics discuss things I may not necessarily have worried about. You know things that just happened.

What sort of stories are you interested in telling?

I’m interested in stories that say something about who we are and engage with social issues. My art has to have meaning; it has to have people talking about things that matter. Like We Need New Names, there’s so much about that that I wanted to say. That’s what drives me for now, you never know what will come in future but to have a dialogue going and people talking about things.

Who are some of your literary influences?

The storytellers in my life, our literature is oral. There was a time when I read nothing but literature in my native language which was still for me a form of engagement. I learned so much about storytelling from those and about language itself. Then there were people like Yvonne Vera, Toni Morrison, Edward P Jones, the usual suspects. Young writers now are just creating brilliant work. Writers like Justin Torres and then you have people online who may not necessarily be published. I’m creating at a very vibrant time. It’s a good time to be a writer and of course I’m connected to young writers, Africans and otherwise. We’re having interesting conversations.

Which book do you wish you’d written and why?

I wish I’d written the bible! Seriously, everybody reads the bible. I approach the bible as a storybook. I don’t come from a seriously Christian background. As kids you didn’t have the whole picture and we were told these bible stories and they were just stories to us. I would have made it NoViolet’s bible. I may write a novel in that kind of style. Look me up in five or six years and see!

What are you working on next?

I’m working on recovering from writing and promoting We Need New Names. I’m working on a collection of stories. I’m not trying to force it, sometimes there’s this pressure to go straight onto the next book. In as much as I want something to come along, it will come along when it does.

John Sutherland, Judge 2013; columnist and Lord Northcliffe Emeritus Professor at UCL

Why is the standard pop music track around three minutes? Because, on the old wind-up gramophone that was as long as the steel spring could keep the disc revolving at 78rpm.

Why do films have musical ‘soundtracks’ and theatrical plays don’t? Because silent films (i.e. those before 1925) had either little orchestras, or pianists. It’s another ‘cultural inertia’ which just, somehow, hung about long after its time had gone.

Why do people dress up, and behave more ‘correctly’ at the theatre than the cinema? Because, for 200 years, theatres operated under ‘royal’ licence.

My point---one I believe in fervently---is that material circumstances condition art.

Which leads to the question I’d pose here. Why are African writers so damned good at short stories? Short, where narrative is concerned, is not easy: it requires more art.

Having just read 100 entries (the bulk of them short stories) for this year’s Caine Prize I’ve been struck by this almost universal mastery (is there a word ‘mistressy’---there should be) of the short form.

Two things particularly constitute that mastery. One is the ability to grab the reader from the first sentence. I’ll give one example, from Elnathan John’s Bayan Layi:

The boys who sleep under the Kuka tree in Bayan Layi like to boast about the people they have killed.

Twenty-five words, and the hook is in the jaw. I would defy anyone not to read on.

There’s no room here to go into the intricate techniques of short narrative. But the other thing which strikes me (and, to put my cards on the table, I come from a different literary tradition) is the control of ‘voice’. One hears, rather than reads. It’s a powerful---at times overwhelming---effect. The ears ring.

Returning to my little riff on ‘material circumstances create art’ there seem to me to be two factors at work here. African writing (it’s a strength) still has roots firmly in oral traditions. If you tell a story orally, you can’t go on too long---it’s cut to the chase from those first 25 words. The other factor is that Africa, until recently, has never had the publishing infrastructure that Europe has built up over 500 years. No HarperCollins, no Viking-Penguin . There is, I think, something uneasy-making that every major work of Chinua Achebe was given the world by courtesy of a British or American publishing house. Colonialism of the imprint. Short stories can slip past that barrier.

Having thought about this year’s Caine entries (would, incidentally, there were ten ‘first prizes’) two things give me pause for thought. Large African states do now have their own publishing industries. And a surprising number of entries for this year’s Caine are from graduates (in some cases instructors) in the thriving ‘creative writing’ classes in the US / UK. 

These two factors will, I think, bring new creative pressures onto African fiction.  How that works out is for the judges in the 2023 Caine Prize to report on.