Director Appointment

Sarah Ozo-Irabor appointed Director of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing

Photo Credit: Personal Credit

London, 20 September 2021 – Sarah Ozo-Irabor has been appointed as the Director of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing.

Sarah Ozo-Irabor is a literary practitioner experienced in spearheading numerous projects centring the engagement with, and promotion of, African literature. She has been instrumental in opening up transnational conversations on works by writers of African descent, not least through founding Books & Rhymes, a literary podcast that reimagines the transformative power of books and the way music and literature dialogue with each other. She is also the founder of Lit Avengers, an intertextual monthly literary salon. In 2020, she was named Brittle Paper’s Social Media Influencer of the Year for her use of social media as a way of redefining literature.

Sarah has worked with media outlets and organisations such as BBC, City University of London, Detroit Public Library, and Cassava Republic Press – and she has participated in the Edinburgh Literary Festival and Africa Writes Festival, amongst others, to produce live events or as a literature specialist.

Commenting on her new position, she said: “I’ve always avidly followed the AKO Caine Prize and the award ceremony is a highlight in my calendar, and it was an amazing experience to work with the Prize and manage events in the summer. Now I am excited to carry out the Prize’s work from this new position and increase visibility for writers of African descent, together with the Chair, the Trustees and Council members. It is a huge honour to be at the front of this journey, and I cannot wait to get started.”

The Chair of the AKO Caine Prize, Ellah P. Wakatama OBE, said: “My fellow Trustees and I are delighted that Sarah is joining us at the AKO Caine Prize. Her work around a busy award season on the 2021 Prize was a clear testament to her passion for literature, her commitment and professionalism, and I am looking forward to seeing what else Sarah will bring to the Prize in her new role as its Director.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors

The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, awarded annually for African creative writing, is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of Booker plc and Chairman of the Booker Prize management committee for nearly 25 years. Its main sponsor is the AKO Foundation, which makes grants towards charities and charitable projects that improve education, promote the arts, or mitigate climate problems.

The Foundation aims to help start up, or be the catalyst for, charitable projects which otherwise could not have been realised. The Foundation takes pride in having a very lean administrative structure so that it can make fast decisions, proving an invaluable ally for the Prize.

The 22 countries represented in the 2021 submissions are: Benin; Botswana; Burkina Faso; Burundi; Congo; Cote d'Ivoire; Egypt; Ethiopia; Ghana; Kenya; Mauritius; Morocco; Namibia; Nigeria; Senegal; South Africa; Sudan; Tanzania; Tunisia; Uganda; Zambia; Zimbabwe.

The Prize is awarded for a short story by an African writer published in English (indicative length 3,000 to 10,000 words). An African writer is taken to mean someone who was born in Africa, or who is a national of an African country, or who has a parent who is African by birth or nationality. Works translated into English from other languages are not excluded, provided they have been published in translation, and should such a work win, a proportion of the prize would be awarded to the translator.

Ellah P. Wakatama OBE is the Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, and Sarah Ozo-Irabor is the Director.

Previous winners are Sudan’s Leila Aboulela (2000), Nigerian Helon Habila  (2001), Kenyan Binyavanga Wainaina (2002), Kenyan Yvonne Owuor (2003),  Zimbabwean Brian  Chikwava (2004), Nigerian Segun Afolabi (2005), South African Mary  Watson (2006), Ugandan Monica Arac de Nyeko (2007), South African  Henrietta Rose-Innes (2008), Nigerian EC Osondu (2009), Sierra Leonean  Olufemi Terry (2010), Zimbabwean NoViolet Bulawayo (2011),  Nigerian Rotimi Babatunde (2012), Nigerian Tope Folarin (2013), Kenyan  Okwiri Oduor (2014), Zambian Namwali Serpell (2015), South African  Lidudumalingani (2016), Sudanese writer, Bushra al-Fadil (2017), Kenyan Makena Onjerika (2018); Nigerian Lesley Nneka Arimah (2019), Nigerian-British Irenosen Okojie (2020) and Ethiopian Meron Hadero (2021).

The AKO Caine Prize anthology comprises the five shortlisted stories alongside stories written at the AKO Caine Prize workshop, and has been published every year by: Interlink Publishing (USA), Jacana Media (South Africa), Lantern Books (Nigeria), Kwani? (Kenya), Sub-Saharan Publishers (Ghana), FEMRITE  (Uganda), ‘amaBooks (Zimbabwe), Mkuki na Nyota (Tanzania), Redsea  Cultural Foundation (Somaliland, Somalia, Djibouti,  Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan and UAE), Gadsden Publishers  (Zambia) and Huza Press (Rwanda). Books are available from the publishers or from the Africa Book Centre, African Books Collective or Amazon.

The AKO Caine Prize is principally supported by The AKO Foundation, The Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, The Miles Morland Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation, the Booker Prize Foundation, The Sigrid Rausing Trust, the Royal Over-Seas League, and John and Judy Niepold. Other funders and partners include The British Council, Georgetown University (USA), The Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, The van Agtmael Family Charitable Fund, Rupert and Clare McCammon, Adam and Victoria Freudenheim, Arindam Bhattacherjee, Phillip Ihenacho and other generous donors.

For more information
Lucy Colomb
lucy@raittorr.co.uk
020 7922 7714

Award Announcement 2021

The 2021 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing is awarded to Meron Hadero

Ethiopian writer has won the 2021 AKO Caine Prize for her short story ‘The Street Sweep’

Photo Credit: Personal Credit

London, 26 July 2021 – Ethiopian-American writer Meron Hadero has been awarded the 2021 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story ‘The Street Sweep’, published in ZYZZYVA (2018). This is the first time an Ethiopian writer has won since the Prize’s inception in 2000.

The Chair of the AKO Caine Prize Judging Panel, Goretti Kyomuhendo, Founder and Director of the African Writers Trust, announced the winner of the £10,000 prize in a film released on Monday 26 July on the Prize’s YouTube channel.

The 2021 winning work, ‘The Street Sweep’ sets forth the story of Getu, an Ethiopian boy at a crossroad of his life as he negotiates the imported power dynamics of foreign aid in Addis Ababa. Set against the backdrop of personal trauma, threatening displacement and forced expropriation, the young narrator weighs his opportunities and soon understands the game of survival that leads the story to culminate in a hopeful twist. In this beautiful tale, the street sweep accounts for the young, ingenuous generation, determined to push open the doors previously closed on them.

Announcing the winner via a film curated for the award’s announcement, Goretti Kyomuhendo said: “The genius of this story lies in Hadero’s ability to turn the lens on the clichéd, NGO story in Africa to ‘do good and do it well’.  It takes us away from the external organisation coming to Ethiopia to help the poor, and focuses the narrative on Getu, an eighteen-year old street sweeper, figuring out ways to navigate the nuances of the rich and poor. Utterly without self-pity, it is Getu’s naivety that endears us to him.

“The Street Sweep is superbly crafted, the language fluid, and weighted with colour and memorable symbolism. Optimism, trust and betrayal ride side by side; but ultimately, this is a story about the redeeming power of hope: “Hope is the greatest asset a man can have.”

“What stood out for the judges was the story’s subtle, but powerful ending, and how everything comes brilliantly together in a clever twist, that sees Getu transform; and the reader pushed to question the thin line between ‘making it’, and the necessary subjugation of the soul.”

Meron Hadero is an Ethiopian-American writer who was born in Addis Ababa and came to the U.S. via Germany as a young child. She is the winner of the 2020 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. In 2019, Meron Hadero was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for her story ‘The Wall’. Her short stories have been published in ZYZZYVA, Ploughshares, Addis Ababa Noir, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, New England Review, Best American Short Stories, among others. Her writing has also been in The New York Times Book Review, The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, and will appear in the forthcoming anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us. A 2019-2020 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University, she’s been a fellow at Yaddo, Ragdale, and MacDowell, and her writing has been supported by the International Institute at the University of Michigan, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and Artist Trust. Meron is an alum of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where she worked as a research analyst for the President of Global Development, and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan, a JD from Yale, and a BA in history from Princeton with a certificate in American Studies. 

‘The Street Sweep’ is available to read now on the AKO Caine Prize website.

Joining Meron on this year’s shortlist were:

• Doreen Baingana (Uganda) for her story ‘Lucky' published in Ibua Journal, Online in Kampala, Uganda, 2021. Read ‘Lucky’ here.

• Rémy Ngamije (Rwanda and Namibia) for his story ‘The Giver of Nicknames' published in Lolwe, Kenya, 2020. Read ‘The Giver of Nicknames’ here.

• Troy Onyango (Kenya) for his story ‘This Little Light of Mine’ published in Doek! Literary Magazine, Namibia, 2020. Read ‘This Little Light of Mine" here.

• Iryn Tushabe (Uganda) for her story ‘A Separation' published in EXILE Quarterly, Canada 2018. Read ‘A Separation’ here .

Each AKO Caine Prize shortlisted writer receives £500.

Alongside Goretti Kyomuhendo on the 2021 judging panel were Razia Iqbal, who is a BBC News Presenter on Newshour on the World Service, and the World Tonight on Radio 4. Victor Ehikhamenor, an award-winning multimedia artist, photographer and writer whose works have featured in several international exhibitions including the 57th Venice Biennale. Georgina Godwin, an independent broadcast journalist and a regular chair of literary events, worldwide. She is also Books Editor for Monocle 24 and presenter of the in-depth author interview show “Meet the Writers”. Nicholas Makoha is a Ugandan born writer and the founder of The Obsidian Foundation, a one-week retreat for black poets of African descent who want to advance their writing practice led by five black acclaimed tutors.

An anthology containing the five 2021 AKO Caine Prize shortlisted stories will be published along with two short stories from the Prize’s Online With Vimbai programme, respectively by Rafeeat Aliyu and TJ Benson.
 

ENDS

Notes to Editors

The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, awarded annually for African creative writing, is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of Booker plc and Chairman of the Booker Prize management committee for nearly 25 years. Its main sponsor is the AKO Foundation, which makes grants towards charities and charitable projects that improve education, promote the arts, or mitigate climate problems.

The Foundation aims to help start up, or be the catalyst for, charitable projects which otherwise could not have been realised. The Foundation takes pride in having a very lean administrative structure so that it can make fast decisions, proving an invaluable ally for the Prize.

The 22 countries represented in the 2021 submissions are: Benin; Botswana; Burkina Faso; Burundi; Congo; Cote d'Ivoire; Egypt; Ethiopia; Ghana; Kenya; Mauritius; Morocco; Namibia; Nigeria; Senegal; South Africa; Sudan; Tanzania; Tunisia; Uganda; Zambia; Zimbabwe.

The Prize is awarded for a short story by an African writer published in English (indicative length 3,000 to 10,000 words). An African writer is taken to mean someone who was born in Africa, or who is a national of an African country, or who has a parent who is African by birth or nationality. Works translated into English from other languages are not excluded, provided they have been published in translation, and should such a work win, a proportion of the prize would be awarded to the translator.

Ellah P. Wakatama OBE is the Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing.

Previous winners are Sudan’s Leila Aboulela (2000), Nigerian Helon Habila  (2001), Kenyan Binyavanga Wainaina (2002), Kenyan Yvonne Owuor (2003),  Zimbabwean Brian  Chikwava (2004), Nigerian Segun Afolabi (2005), South African Mary  Watson (2006), Ugandan Monica Arac de Nyeko (2007), South African  Henrietta Rose-Innes (2008), Nigerian EC Osondu (2009), Sierra Leonean  Olufemi Terry (2010), Zimbabwean NoViolet Bulawayo (2011),  Nigerian Rotimi Babatunde (2012), Nigerian Tope Folarin (2013), Kenyan  Okwiri Oduor (2014), Zambian Namwali Serpell (2015), South African  Lidudumalingani (2016), Sudanese writer, Bushra al-Fadil (2017), Kenyan Makena Onjerika (2018); Nigerian Lesley Nneka Arimah (2019) and Nigerian-British Irenosen Okojie (2020).

The AKO Caine Prize anthology comprises the five shortlisted stories alongside stories written at the AKO Caine Prize workshop, and has been published every year by: Interlink Publishing (USA), Jacana Media (South Africa), Lantern Books (Nigeria), Kwani? (Kenya), Sub-Saharan Publishers (Ghana), FEMRITE  (Uganda), ‘amaBooks (Zimbabwe), Mkuki na Nyota (Tanzania), Redsea  Cultural Foundation (Somaliland, Somalia, Djibouti,  Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan and UAE), Gadsden Publishers  (Zambia) and Huza Press (Rwanda). Books are available from the publishers or from the Africa Book Centre, African Books Collective or Amazon.

The AKO Caine Prize is principally supported by The AKO Foundation, The Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, The Miles Morland Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation, the Booker Prize Foundation, The Sigrid Rausing Trust, the Royal Over-Seas League, and John and Judy Niepold. Other funders and partners include The British Council, Georgetown University (USA), The Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, The van Agtmael Family Charitable Fund, Rupert and Clare McCammon, Adam and Victoria Freudenheim, Arindam Bhattacherjee, Phillip Ihenacho and other generous donors.


For more information
Lucy Colomb
lucy@raittorr.co.uk
020 7922 7714

The AKO Caine Prize reveals its 2021 shortlist

London, 2 June 2021 - The 2021 AKO Caine Prize shortlist has been announced, revealing five stories of “impressive craft and intelligent language”, chosen from a multitude of submissions spanning over 22 countries. This year’s judging panel deliberated the stories and chose the shortlist virtually.

The shortlisted authors for the 2021 Prize are from Ethiopia, Kenya, Namibia and Uganda.

Founding Director of the African Writers Trust and this year’s Chair of judges, Goretti Kyomuhendo said: “We were looking for literary excellence and great stories. It is clear that the wealth of stories presented to the Prize speak about the African experience from a multitude of perspectives and forms, while often centering the themes of love, loss, identity, hope and afterlife.

“It has been hugely encouraging to see consistently excellent editing throughout the stories put to our judgment, and we have enthusiastically noticed a large number of submissions from homegrown literary journals from the continent this year.

“What comes across vividly in this year’s shortlisted stories, through their impressive craft and intelligent language is their ability to resonate profoundly with the reader. My fellow judges and I were reminded, once again, of the redemptive power of stories. These remarkable five narratives all exemplify, with delicacy and truth, what good fiction is. 

“Intermingling politics and humour, brutality and love, loss and hope, each of these stories poignantly convey images of the continent and its diaspora that demand to be read. The true art of African storytelling is manifested in the voices of these five exceptional pieces.”

The shortlisted stories for the 2021 AKO Caine Prize are:

·       ‘Lucky' by Doreen Baingana (Uganda) published in Ibua Journal, Online in Kampala, Uganda, 2021

®    Please find her story here

·       ‘The Street Sweep’ by Meron Hadero (Ethiopia) published in ZYZZYVA, USA, 2018

®    Please find her story here

·       ‘The Giver of Nicknames' by Rémy Ngamije (Namibia) published in Lolwe, Kenya, 2020

®    Please find his story here 

·       ‘This Little Light of Mine’ by Troy Onyango (Kenya) published in Doek! Literary Magazine, Namibia, 2020

®    Please find his story here

·       ‘A Separation' by Iryn Tushabe (Ugandan) published in EXILE Quarterly, Canada 2018

®    Please find her story here

Biographies of the shortlisted writers can be found on our website.

Goretti Kyomuhendo is joined on the 2021 judging panel by Razia Iqbal, a BBC News Presenter on Newshour on the World Service, and the World Tonight on Radio 4; Victor Ehikhamenor, an award-winning multimedia artist, photographer and writer; Georgina Godwin, an independent broadcast journalist and a regular chair of literary events as well as Books Editor for Monocle 24; and Nicholas Makoha, a writer who founded The Obsidian Foundation, and sits on the board of the Arvon Foundation and the Ministry of Stories.

The winner of the £10,000 prize will be announced via a specially curated virtual award in July. Each shortlisted writer will also receive £500.

For this 2021 Prize edition, Ms Sarah Ozo-Irabor has been appointed Event Producer and as such she will work on the Prize’s award event series, curating new types of literary events for this year’s shortlist. Ms Ozo-Irabor is a literary critic and producer with a passion for bridging the gap between canonical and contemporary literatures by writers of African descent, with a solid experience in events management. She is the creator and host of the renowned Books & Rhymes Podcast and she founded Lit Avengers, an intertextual monthly literary salon.

As in previous years, our partners and co-publishers in 16 African countries will receive a print-ready PDF free of charge.

ENDS

Notes to Editors

The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, awarded annually for African creative writing, is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of Booker plc and Chairman of the Booker Prize management committee for nearly 25 years. Its main sponsor is the AKO Foundation, whose primary focus is the making of grants to projects which promote the arts and improve education.

Increasingly, the Foundation aims to help start up, and be the catalyst for, new charitable projects which otherwise could not have been realised. The Foundation also takes pride in having a very lean structure so that it can make fast decisions, proving an invaluable ally for the Prize.

The 22 countries represented in the 2021 submissions are: Benin; Botswana; Burkina Faso; Burundi; Congo; Cote d'Ivoire; Egypt; Ethiopia; Ghana; Kenya; Mauritius; Morocco; Namibia; Nigeria; Senegal; South Africa; Sudan; Tanzania; Tunisia; Uganda; Zambia; Zimbabwe.

The Prize is awarded for a short story by an African writer published in English (indicative length 3,000 to 10,000 words). An African writer is taken to mean someone who was born in Africa, or who is a national of an African country, or who has a parent who is African by birth or nationality. Works translated into English from other languages are not excluded, provided they have been published in translation, and should such a work win, a proportion of the prize would be awarded to the translator.

Ellah P. Wakatama OBE is the Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing.

Previous winners are Sudan’s Leila Aboulela (2000), Nigerian Helon Habila  (2001), Kenyan Binyavanga Wainaina (2002), Kenyan Yvonne Owuor (2003),  Zimbabwean Brian  Chikwava (2004), Nigerian Segun Afolabi (2005), South African Mary  Watson (2006), Ugandan Monica Arac de Nyeko (2007), South African  Henrietta Rose-Innes (2008), Nigerian EC Osondu (2009), Sierra Leonean  Olufemi Terry (2010), Zimbabwean NoViolet Bulawayo (2011),  Nigerian Rotimi Babatunde (2012), Nigerian Tope Folarin (2013), Kenyan  Okwiri Oduor (2014), Zambian Namwali Serpell (2015), South African  Lidudumalingani (2016), Sudanese writer, Bushra al-Fadil (2017), Kenyan Makena Onjerika (2018); Nigerian Lesley Nneka Arimah (2019) and Nigerian-British Irenosen Okojie (2020).

The AKO Caine Prize anthology comprises the five shortlisted stories alongside stories written at the AKO Caine Prize workshop, and is published each year by: New Internationalist (UK), Interlink Publishing (USA), Jacana Media (South Africa), Lantern Books (Nigeria), Kwani? (Kenya), Sub-Saharan Publishers (Ghana), FEMRITE  (Uganda), ‘amaBooks (Zimbabwe), Mkuki na Nyota (Tanzania), Redsea  Cultural Foundation (Somaliland, Somalia, Djibouti,  Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan and UAE), Gadsden Publishers  (Zambia) and Huza Press (Rwanda). Books are available from the publishers or from the Africa Book Centre, African Books Collective or Amazon.

The AKO Caine Prize is principally supported by The AKO Foundation, The Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, The Miles Morland Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation, the Booker Prize Foundation, The Sigrid Rausing Trust, the Royal Over-Seas League, and John and Judy Niepold. Other funders and partners include The British Council, Georgetown University (USA), The Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, The van Agtmael Family Charitable Fund, Rupert and Clare McCammon, Adam and Victoria Freudenheim, Arindam Bhattacherjee, Phillip Ihenacho and other generous donors.

For more information

Lucy Colomb

lucy@raittorr.co.uk

020 7922 7714

The AKO Caine Prize announces its 2021 Judges

London, 22 April 2021 – The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing has announced 153 submissions from 22 African countries via their new online submissions platform this year, including an entry from Burkina Faso, for the first time. Also announced, are the five judges for the 2021 Prize.
 
This year’s Chair of judges is the Founder and Director of the African Writers Trust (AWT), Goretti Kyomuhendo. She is the first Ugandan woman writer to receive the International Writing Program Fellowship at the University of Iowa, and has been recognised for her work as a writer and literary activist nationally and internationally. As the founding member of FEMRITE – Uganda Women Writers Association and Publishing House, Kyomuhendo has been championing the work of African editors and publishers for decades. Her work at the AWT promotes synergies and collaborative learning between African writers on the continent and in the Diaspora. She will be tutoring writers and readers in a new hybrid Reading Residency programme in Kampala, Uganda, across April and May 2021.
 
Kyomuhendo is joined on the judging panel by Razia Iqbal, who is a BBC News Presenter on Newshour on the World Service, and the World Tonight on Radio 4, and was the BBC arts correspondent for ten years. She will be a Visiting Journalism Professor at Princeton in 2022. She was born in Uganda and lived in Nairobi until she was 8-years-old, when she moved to London. Victor Ehikhamenor is an award-winning multimedia artist, photographer and writer whose works have featured in several international exhibitions including the 57th Venice Biennale as part of the Nigerian Pavilion in 2017 and the 12th Dak’art Biennale in Dakar, Senegal in 2016. He is the founder of Angels and Muse, a thought laboratory dedicated to the promotion and development of contemporary African art and literature in Lagos, Nigeria. Georgina Godwin is an independent broadcast journalist. A regular chair of literary events, worldwide, she is also Books Editor for Monocle 24 and presenter of the in-depth author interview show “Meet the Writers”. She is a frequent host of the award winning current affairs programme The Globalist and a commentator on Southern African politics. She was a founder member of SW Radio Africa, Zimbabwe’s first independent radio station and of the Harare International Festival of the Arts. She serves on the board of the charities English PEN & Developing Artists. Writer Nicholas Makoha was born in Uganda has lived in Kenya, Saudi Arabia and currently resides in London. He is the founder of The Obsidian Foundation, a one-week retreat for black poets of African descent who want to advance their writing practice led by five black acclaimed tutors. In 2017, his debut collection, Kingdom of Gravity, was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and was one of the Guardian’s best books of the year. Makoha is a Trustee for the Arvon Foundation and the Ministry of Stories, and a member of the Malika’s Poetry Kitchen collective.

Full biographies of each judge can be found on our website here.
  
Commenting on this year’s judges’ appointments, Ellah Wakatama OBE, Chair of the AKO Caine Prize, said: “It is a huge pleasure to have such esteemed figures from the arts and literary worlds on our judging panel this year. I am sure their wealth of experience, knowledge and passion for literature, as well as their different perspectives of the arts, will make for lively debate and another exciting shortlist. I am especially pleased that Goretti Kyomuhendo, a literary activist whose work in developing and professionalising the publishing industry has had such a profound effect on the Continent, will be our Chair. I am so pleased that so many authors in Africa and around the globe have engaged fully with our new online submission process, during this period of the pandemic. I wish the judges the very best in selecting the 2021 shortlist, and celebrating the literature of Africa and her Diaspora for another year.”
 
The judges will meet online in May and, guided by the Chair, will deliberate on their final five choices.
 
Each writer shortlisted for the AKO Caine Prize will be awarded £500, and the winner will receive a £10,000 prize. If a work in translation is chosen as the winning story, the prize will be shared between the author and the translator.
 
The five shortlisted stories will be compiled into the official AKO Caine Prize anthology which has been published by New Internationalist in the UK, Interlink Publishing in the USA, and a variety of international publishers around the world.

 
-Ends-
Notes to Editors

The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, awarded annually for African creative writing, is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of Booker plc and Chairman of the Booker Prize management committee for nearly 25 years. Its main sponsor is the AKO Foundation, whose primary focus is the making of grants to projects which promote the arts and improve education.
 
Increasingly, the Foundation aims to help start up, and be the catalyst for, new charitable projects which otherwise could not have been realised. The Foundation also takes pride in having a very lean structure so that it can make fast decisions, proving an invaluable ally for the Prize.
 
The 22 countries represented in this year’s submissions are: Benin; Botswana; Burkina Faso; Burundi; Congo; Cote d'Ivoire; Egypt; Ethiopia; Ghana; Kenya; Mauritius; Morocco; Namibia; Nigeria; Senegal; South Africa; Sudan; Tanzania; Tunisia; Uganda; Zambia; Zimbabwe.
 
The Prize is awarded for a short story by an African writer published in English (indicative length 3,000 to 10,000 words). An African writer is taken to mean someone who was born in Africa, or who is a national of an African country, or who has a parent who is African by birth or nationality. Works translated into English from other languages are not excluded, provided they have been published in translation, and should such a work win, a proportion of the prize would be awarded to the translator.
 
Ellah P. Wakatama OBE is the Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing.
 
Previous winners are Sudan’s Leila Aboulela (2000), Nigerian Helon Habila  (2001), Kenyan Binyavanga Wainaina (2002), Kenyan Yvonne Owuor (2003),  Zimbabwean Brian  Chikwava (2004), Nigerian Segun Afolabi (2005), South African Mary  Watson (2006), Ugandan Monica Arac de Nyeko (2007), South African  Henrietta Rose-Innes (2008), Nigerian EC Osondu (2009), Sierra Leonean  Olufemi Terry (2010), Zimbabwean NoViolet Bulawayo (2011),  Nigerian Rotimi Babatunde (2012), Nigerian Tope Folarin (2013), Kenyan  Okwiri Oduor (2014), Zambian Namwali Serpell (2015), South African  Lidudumalingani (2016), Sudanese writer, Bushra al-Fadil (2017), Kenyan Makena Onjerika (2018); Nigerian Lesley Nneka Arimah (2019) and Nigerian-British Irenosen Okojie (2020).
 
The AKO Caine Prize anthology comprises the five shortlisted stories alongside stories written at the AKO Caine Prize workshop, and is published each year by: New Internationalist (UK), Interlink Publishing (USA), Jacana Media (South Africa), Lantern Books (Nigeria), Kwani? (Kenya), Sub-Saharan Publishers (Ghana), FEMRITE  (Uganda), ‘amaBooks (Zimbabwe), Mkuki na Nyota (Tanzania), Redsea  Cultural Foundation (Somaliland, Somalia, Djibouti,  Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan and UAE), Gadsden Publishers  (Zambia) and Huza Press (Rwanda). Books are available from the publishers or from the Africa Book Centre, African Books Collective or Amazon.
 
The AKO Caine Prize is principally supported by The AKO Foundation, The Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, The Carnegie Corporation, the Booker Prize Foundation, The Sigrid Rausing Trust, the Royal Over-Seas League, and John and Judy Niepold. Other funders and partners include The British Council, Georgetown University (USA), The Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, The van Agtmael Family Charitable Fund, Rupert and Clare McCammon, Adam and Victoria Freudenheim, Arindam Bhattacherjee, Phillip Ihenacho and other generous donors.

For more information
Lucy Colomb
lucy@raittorr.co.uk
+44(0) 20 7922 7714

AKO Caine Prize for African Writing - a statement

London, 8 March 2021 – The part-time administrator of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, Dele Meiji Fatunla, has stepped down from his post after three years. The Trustees are grateful to him for his contribution to the success of the Prize over this period and wish him well for the future. All activities of the Prize in 2021 are continuing as normal and 150 submissions have now been received.

New Online Editing Programme

The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing launches New Online Editing Programme

The programme, titled Online with Vimbai, will mentor writers in producing stories eligible for the AKO Caine Prize

London, 5 October 2020 – The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing has launched a new editing programme for three selected writers to receive tailored support and guidance on their short-form writing. The pilot programme launched in September 2020 with Senegalese writer Aminata J Sow and Nigerian writers TJ Benson and Rafeeat Aliyu. 

The scheme, Online with Vimbai, was initiated by former Chair of the Prize Dr Delia Jarrett-Macauley. It is led by Vimbai Shire, editor and founder of Beyond White Space Ltd, a publishing services company which provides training, editorial and design expertise and project management to publishers, businesses, institutions and individuals, including the African Writers’ Trust, Canongate Books and Kwani? amongst others.
 
The new AKO Caine Prize mentoring and editorial coaching programme offers each writer up to 24 hours of one-to-one quality support and guidance online over a twelve-week period. It involves a professional assessment of each short story, discussions around the marketing direction for each piece, and regular feedback from the editor until a final review of the work is carried out to produce writings that are of a publishable standard.
 
Speaking in a joint statement about the programme, Chair of the AKO Caine Prize Ellah Wakatama OBE and Administrator Dele Fatunla said: “We are very pleased to expand on the Prize’s mission to support and accompany African writers as they find their feet in the publishing industry. Our aim for this programme is to open up access for writers and support them in their journey towards publication.
 
“Launching the programme with Vimbai Shire, an extremely talented editor, is an honour for us and we look forward to seeing the programme grow in the years to come.”
 
Vimbai Shire has worked on a range of short-form fiction and non-fiction pieces by distinguished authors including Leila Aboulela, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Brian Chikwava, Aminatta Forna, Billy Kahora, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and the late Binyavanga Wainaina. Ms Shire has also served two brief terms as acting director of the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2016 and 2018. Most recently, Ms Shire has been involved in a training and mentorship scheme for young publishers entering the industry.

ENDS

Notes to Editors

The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, awarded annually for African creative writing, is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of Booker plc and Chairman of the Booker Prize management committee for nearly 25 years. Its main sponsor is the AKO Foundation, whose primary focus is the making of grants to projects which promote the arts and improve education.
 
The Prize is awarded for a short story by an African writer published in English (indicative length 3,000 to 10,000 words). An African writer is taken to mean someone who was born in Africa, or who is a national of an African country, or who has a parent who is African by birth or nationality. Works translated into English from other languages are not excluded, provided they have been published in translation, and should such a work win, a proportion of the prize would be awarded to the translator.
 
The AKO Caine Prize 2020 is principally supported by the AKO Foundation, The Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, The Miles Morland Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation, the Booker Prize Foundation, The Sigrid Rausing Trust, the Royal Over-Seas League, Adam and Victoria Freudenheim and John and Judy Niepold. Other funders and partners include The British Council, Georgetown University (USA), The Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, The van Agtmael Family Charitable Fund, Rupert and Clare McCammon, Arindam Bhattacherjee, Phillip Ihenacho and other generous donors.
 
Previous winners are Sudanese Leila Aboulela (2000), Nigerian Helon Habila  (2001), Kenyan Binyavanga Wainaina (2002), Kenyan Yvonne Owuor (2003),  Zimbabwean Brian Chikwava (2004), Nigerian Segun Afolabi (2005), South African Mary Watson (2006), Ugandan Monica Arac de Nyeko (2007), South African  Henrietta Rose-Innes (2008), Nigerian EC Osondu (2009), Sierra Leonean  Olufemi Terry (2010), Zimbabwean NoViolet Bulawayo (2011),  Nigerian Rotimi Babatunde (2012), Nigerian Tope Folarin (2013), Kenyan  Okwiri Oduor (2014), Zambian Namwali Serpell (2015), South African  Lidudumalingani (2016), Sudanese writer, Bushra al-Fadil (2017), Kenyan Makena Onjerika (2018), Nigerian Lesley Nneka Arimah (2019) and British-Nigerian Irenosen Okojie (2020).
 
Vimbai Shire is an independent editor and founder of Beyond White Space Ltd, a London-based publishing services company which provides training, editorial and design expertise and project management to publishers, businesses, institutions and individuals. Clients include Africa Utopia, the African Writers’ Trust, Canongate Books, Granta Magazine, The Indigo Press, Kwani?, Oneworld Publications, Nobrow, Periscope Books, Spread the Word and World Editions.
 
Currently, alongside selected editorial projects, Vimbai Shire is a mentor and skills coach to nineteen young apprentices who are part of the UK’s first L.3 Publishing Apprenticeship programme, a scheme to which she also provides strategic content development and delivery.

For more information:
Lucy Colomb
lucy@raittorr.co.uk

+44(0)78 58 68 78 39

Award announcement 2020

The 2020 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing is awarded to Irenosen Okojie

Photo by David Kwaw Mensah

London, 27 July 2020 – Nigerian-British writer Irenosen Okojie has been awarded the 2020 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story ‘Grace Jones’, from Nudibranch, published by Dialogue Books (2019).

The Chair of the AKO Caine Prize judging panel, director of The Africa Centre, Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp CBE, announced the winner of the £10,000 prize in a film released on Monday 27 July.

This year in light of the coronavirus pandemic and continuing government restrictions, the AKO Caine Prize commissioned British-Nigerian filmmaker Joseph A. Adesunloye to direct and produce a documentary film to celebrate the shortlist and announce the winner.

‘Grace Jones’ tells the story of Sidra, a woman whose life is consumed with guilt. In a devastating tragedy, thirteen-year-old Sidra loses her entire family to a fire that destroys their flat. Years later, Sidra finds herself working as an impersonator of the famous Jamaican singer, model and actress Grace Jones. In this heart-wrenching account of loss, fractured identity and bereavement, Okojie deftly layers the psychological trauma of the daily experience of a Black woman in contemporary British society and of the specific tragedy that befalls Sidra.

Announcing the award, Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp said: “This year’s winner of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing is a radical story that plays with logic, time and place; it defies convention, as it unfolds a narrative that is multi-layered and multi-dimensional. It is risky, dazzling, imaginative and bold; it is intense and full of stunning prose; it’s also a story that reflects African consciousness in the way it so seamlessly shifts dimensions, and it’s a story that demonstrates extraordinary imagination. Most of all, it is world-class fiction from an African writer.

“At the heart of this story is its main protagonist, a young woman from Martinique living in London, who is moonlighting as a celebrity impersonator; her journey moves exquisitely and seamlessly between the exploration of the universal experiences of unspeakable suffering, pleasure and escape, and the particular experience of being Black and African in a global city such as London.

“In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has prompted deeply powerful questions about race, justice and equality in the world today - this story offers a salient exploration of what it can mean to embody and perform Blackness in the world. This is a story of tremendously delicate power and beauty, and one in which we recognise the tradition of African storytelling and imagination at its finest.”

Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian-British writer. Her debut novel Butterfly Fish won a Betty Trask award and was shortlisted for an Edinburgh International First Book Award. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Observer, the Guardian, the BBC and the Huffington Post amongst other publications. Her short stories have appeared internationally in publications including Salt's Best British Short Stories 2017, Kwani? and The Year's Best Weird Fiction. She was named at the London Short Story Festival by Booker Prize winning author Ben Okri OBE as a dynamic writing talent to watch and featured in the Evening Standard Magazine as one of London’s exciting new authors. Her short story collection Speak Gigantular, published by Jacaranda Books was shortlisted for the Edgehill Short Story Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Saboteur Awards and nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her collection of stories Nudibranch which includes her AKO Caine Prize winning ‘Grace Jones’ is published by Dialogue Books.

‘Grace Jones’ is available to read now on the AKO Caine Prize website.

Joining Irenosen on this year’s shortlist were:

• Erica Sugo Anyadike (Tanzania) for ‘How to Marry An African President’ published in adda: Commonwealth Stories (2019). Available to read here.

• Chikodili Emelumadu (Nigeria & UK) for ‘What to do When Your Child Brings Home a Mami Wata’ published in The Shadow Booth: Vol.2 (2018). Available to read here.

• Jowhor Ile (Nigeria) for ‘Fisherman's Stew’, published in The Sewanee Review (2019). Available to read here.

• Rémy Ngamije (Rwanda & Namibia) for ‘The Neighbourhood Watch’, published in The Johannesburg Review of Books (2019). Available to read here.

Each AKO Caine Prize shortlisted writer receives £500.

Alongside Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp CBE on the 2020 judging panel were Audrey Brown, a South African broadcast journalist, and one of the leading voices for the BBC World Service, presenting the flagship daily news and current affairs programme, Focus on Africa. Gabriel Gbadamosi, an Irish-Nigerian poet and playwright. His London novel Vauxhall (2013) won the Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize and Best International Novel at the Sharjah Book Fair. Ebissé Wakjira-Rouw, an Ethiopian-born non-fiction editor, podcaster, publisher and policy advisor at the Dutch Council for Culture in the Netherlands, and James Murua, a Kenya-based blogger, journalist, podcaster, and editor who has written for a variety of media outlets in a career spanning print, web and TV.

An anthology containing the five 2020 AKO Caine Prize shortlisted stories will be published in September 2020 by The New Internationalist. 

ENDS

Notes to Editors

The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, awarded annually for African creative writing, is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of Booker plc and Chairman of the Booker Prize management committee for nearly 25 years. Its main sponsor is the AKO Foundation, whose primary focus is the making of grants to projects which promote the arts and improve education.

The 27 countries represented in this year’s eligible entries are: Angola/Cabinda; Botswana; Cameroon; Cote D'Ivoire; Democratic Republic of Congo; Egypt; Ethiopia; Ghana; Kenya; Libya; Malawi; Mauritius; Morocco; Nigeria; Namibia; Rwanda; Senegal; Sierra Leone; Somalia; South Africa; Sri Lanka; Sudan; Tanzania; The Gambia; Uganda; Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The Prize is awarded for a short story by an African writer published in English (indicative length 3,000 to 10,000 words). An African writer is taken to mean someone who was born in Africa, or who is a national of an African country, or who has a parent who is African by birth or nationality. Works translated into English from other languages are not excluded, provided they have been published in translation, and should such a work win, a proportion of the prize would be awarded to the translator.                                                      

Ellah Wakatama OBE is the Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing and Dele Fatunla is the Administrator.

Previous winners are Sudanese Leila Aboulela (2000), Nigerian Helon Habila  (2001), Kenyan Binyavanga Wainaina (2002), Kenyan Yvonne Owuor (2003),  Zimbabwean Brian Chikwava (2004), Nigerian Segun Afolabi (2005), South African Mary Watson (2006), Ugandan Monica Arac de Nyeko (2007), South African  Henrietta Rose-Innes (2008), Nigerian EC Osondu (2009), Sierra Leonean  Olufemi Terry (2010), Zimbabwean NoViolet Bulawayo (2011),  Nigerian Rotimi Babatunde (2012), Nigerian Tope Folarin (2013), Kenyan  Okwiri Oduor (2014), Zambian Namwali Serpell (2015), South African  Lidudumalingani (2016), Sudanese writer, Bushra al-Fadil (2017), Kenyan Makena Onjerika (2018) and Nigerian Lesley Nneka Arimah (2019).

The AKO Caine Prize anthology comprises the five shortlisted stories alongside stories written at AKO Caine Prize workshops, and is published by: New Internationalist (UK), Interlink Publishing (USA), Jacana Media (South Africa), Lantern Books (Nigeria), Kwani? (Kenya), Sub-Saharan Publishers (Ghana), FEMRITE  (Uganda), ‘amaBooks (Zimbabwe), Mkuki na Nyota (Tanzania), Redsea  Cultural Foundation (Somaliland, Somalia, Djibouti,  Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan and UAE), Gadsden Publishers  (Zambia) and Huza Press (Rwanda).  Books are available from the publishers or from the Africa Book Centre, African Books Collective or Amazon.

The AKO Caine Prize 2020 is principally supported by the AKO Foundation, The Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, The Miles Morland Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation, the Booker Prize Foundation, The Sigrid Rausing Trust, the Royal Over-Seas League, Adam and Victoria Freudenheim and John and Judy Niepold. Other funders and partners include The British Council, Georgetown University (USA), The Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, The van Agtmael Family Charitable Fund, Rupert and Clare McCammon, Arindam Bhattacherjee, Phillip Ihenacho and other generous donors.

For more information:
Lucy Colomb
lucy@raittorr.co.uk

+44(0)78 58 68 78 39