Judges

Judges are drawn from different literary fields including eminent authors, artists, journalists, broadcasters, and academics with expertise and a connection to literature in Africa. Five stories are selected for the shortlist by the judges, with one being selected as the winner on the day of the award in July each year. 

Please see below for a list of past judges. 

JUDGES - 2023

FAREDA BANDA - CHAIR OF JUDGES

Fareda Banda is  Zimbabwean law professor based at SOAS, University of London. She writes on women’s rights, family law and more recently law and literature. Amazon.co.uk : fareda banda Her publications include Women, Law and Human Rights Women, Law and Human Rights: An African Perspective: Fareda Banda: Hart Publishing (bloomsbury.com), a co-edited book, with Lisa Fishbayn Joffe on Women’s Rights and Religious Law Women's Rights and Religious Law: Domestic and International Perspecti (routledge.com). Her most recent book, African Migration, Human Rights and Literature. African Migration, Human Rights and Literature: : Fareda Banda: Hart Publishing (bloomsbury.com) explores how art, and specifically literature, can be used as a form of art activism. 

EDWIGE-RENÉE DRO

Edwige-Renée Dro is a writer, literary translator, and literary activist from Côte d’Ivoire. Her short stories and articles have been published in anthologies such as New Daughters of Africa, Africa39, the Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, This is Africa, etc. As a literary translator, she has mentored emerging literary translators as part of the Bakwa Literary Translation workshop that birthed the anthology: Your feet will lead you where your heart is / Le crepuscule des âmes soeurs. She is also the translator of the anthology Les oiseaux d’eau sur la rive du lac / Water birds on the lakeshore (English and French), the children’s book: Rêve d’oiseau by Shenaz Patel (A Dream of Birds – English), the short story: Petit Pa by Hemley Boum (Little Pa – English), etc. In 2020, she founded 1949: the library of women’s writings from Africa and the black world in Abidjan.

KADIJA GOERGE SESAY

Kadija George Sesay is a Sierra Leonean/British scholar and literary activist. She is the Publications Manager for Inscribe/Peepal Tree Press, where she commissions anthologies, such as Glimpse, a Black British speculative fiction anthology. She is the editor of several other anthologies and the founder/publisher of SABLE LitMag. She has published poetry, short stories and essays, the latest is in New Daughters of Africa. Her poetry collection is Irki; her forthcoming collection, The Modern Pan-Africanist’s Journey. She is co-founder of Mboka Festival of Arts Culture and Sport in The Gambia and founder of the ‘AfriPoeTree’ app. She is on the board of African Studies Association (UK) and chair of Yaram Arts. She has judged several writing competitions and is the resident judge for the SI Leeds Literary Prize. She has received awards and fellowships for her work in the creative arts including an honorary doctorate from Goldsmiths University. 

JENDELLA BENSON

Jendella Benson is a British-Nigerian author and editor. Her debut novel Hope & Glory was published in April 2022 and her short story Kindle was published in The Book of Birmingham collection. She is Head of Editorial at Black Ballad – the award-winning digital magazine and membership community for black women in Britain and beyond – and has written for The Sunday Times STYLE, The Independent and The Telegraph. Originally from Birmingham, she is now based in London and is working on her second novel.

WARSAN SHIRE

Warsan Shire is a Somali British writer and poet born in Nairobi and raised in London. She has written two chapbooks, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth and Her Blue Body. She was awarded the inaugural Brunel International African Poetry Prize and served as the first Young Poet Laureate of London. She is the youngest member of the Royal Society of Literature and is included in the Penguin Modern Poets series. Shire wrote the poetry for the Peabody Award–winning visual album Lemonade and the Disney film Black Is King in collaboration with Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. She also wrote the short film Brave Girl Rising, highlighting the voices and faces of Somali girls in Africa’s largest refugee camp. Warsan Shire lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children. Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is her full-length debut poetry collection.

JUDGES - 2022

Àsìkò Okelarin

Àsìkò is a London based Nigerian visual artist who communicates his thoughts through the mediums of photography, film and mixed media. His work is constructed in the narrative that straddles between fantasy and reality as a response to his experiences of identity, culture and heritage.

Initiated by internal dialogue his work sparks conversations about the African identity, cultural symbolism and depictions of Yoruba ideology.With an intrinsically sensual approach, where the body becomes the subject his work generates new ideas around identity, power dynamics and violence. 

Àsìkò’s first solo show entitled ‘The Adorned Series’ was shown at Rele gallery in Nigeria in 2016.  A thematic celebration of African heritage; the work explored womanhood and its intersection with culture and adornment through the use of jewelry. His second solo show at the Gallery of African Art in London 2018 entitled ‘Conversations’ explored the space of women in African patriarchal cultural structures through the lens of gender violence. 

More recently Àsìkò’s work with the Royal Shakespeare Company has been featured in The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph. He currently has two solo public art exhibitions running in London, one with his new body work 'Of Myth and Legend' currently on Sloane street in Knightsbridge and the other at St James Pavilion entitled 'The Woman in the Photograph'.

Okey Ndibe - Chair of Judges

Okey Ndibe is the author of two novels, Foreign Gods, Inc. and Arrows of Rain, a memoir, Never Look an American in the Eye (winner of the 2017 Connecticut Book Award for nonfiction), and The Man Lives: A Conversation with Wole Soyinka on Life, Literature and Politics

He earned MFA and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and has taught at various universities and colleges, including Brown, St. Lawrence, Trinity College, Connecticut College, and the University of Lagos (as a Fulbright scholar). His award-winning journalism has appeared in major newspapers and magazines in the UK, Italy, South Africa, Nigeria, and the US—where he served on the editorial board of the Hartford Courant. He writes a column on the substack platform titled “Offside Musings,” and co-hosts a podcast of the same name.

Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane

Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane is the co-founder and co-host of The Cheeky Natives - a literary platform that focuses on archiving and curatorship of Black artistic expressions. The Cheeky Natives was awarded social media influencer of the year by Brittle Paper in 2021.

Letlhogonolo is an advocate and a member of the Johannesburg Society of Bar. They hold a Bachelor of Law from Stellenbosch University and a Masters of Law (summa cum laude) from the University of California, Los Angeles. They have guest lectured at Stellenbosch University, the University of the Witwatersrand, and the University of Pretoria.

In 2018, they were named one of the Top 200 Young South Africans.

Angela Wachuka

Angela Wachuka is a Founder & Managing Trustee at Book Bunk, a firm driving the restoration of some of Nairobi's most iconic public libraries. Book Bunk's flagship project is Nairobi's oldest public library; The McMillan Memorial Library, and two of its branches in Eastlands (Kaloleni Library and Eastlands Library).

She was the executive director of Kwani Trust. Under her leadership, literary and other prizes included the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature and the Prince Claus Award for establishing a dynamic platform for new voices in African Literature. 

Angela Wachuka is also a founding member of the Creative Economy Working Group, and served as Secretary to a National Film Committee appointed by Kenya's Ministry of Sports, Culture and the Arts to align proposed film legislation. She was an International Arts Management Fellow at the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. From 2019 to 2020, she was an Africa Leader at the Obama Foundation. 

Her main interests lie in the intersection between media, popular culture & the creative industries. She worked at BBC’s African News and Current Affairs Department in London and holds a degree in Anthropology & Law from the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE). Wachuka is Publisher at Bunk Books, the content development arm affiliated with Book Bunk.

JUDGES - 2021

Goretti Kyomuhendo

Goretti Kyomuhendo is one of Uganda’s leading novelists. She holds an MA in creative writing from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her first novel, The First Daughter, was published in 1996, followed by Secrets No More in 1999, which won the Uganda National Literary Award for Best Novel in the same year. In 2002, she published a novella, Whispers from Vera. Her third novel, Waiting, was published by The Feminist Press in New York in 2007. In 2014, she published the Essential Handbook for African Creative Writers. She has also published several children’s books and short stories, the latest being Lost and Found published in New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent edited by Margaret Busby (2019).  The first Ugandan woman writer to receive the International Writing Program Fellowship at the University of Iowa, Goretti has been recognised for her work as a writer and literary activist nationally and internationally, and has participated in numerous forums worldwide. In 2019, Goretti was featured among the 100 Most Influential Africans by the UK- based, bestselling Pan African Magazine, New African. In 2020, she was appointed a member of the Commonwealth Foundation’s Civil Society Advisory Governors representing Africa. Goretti is a founding member of FEMRITE – Uganda Women Writers’ Association and Publishing House – and worked as its first Director for ten years (1997-2007).  In 2009, she founded and is Director of the African Writers Trust, which promotes synergies and collaborative learning between African writers on the continent and in the Diaspora.  

Nick Makoha

Nick Makoha is the founder of The Obsidian Foundation. In 2017, Nick’s 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. Nick is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and the Complete Works alumnus. He won the 2015 Brunel International AfricanPoetry Prize and the 2016 Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Prize for his pamphlet Resurrection Man. His poems have appeared in the Cambridge Review, the New York Times, Poetry Review, 'e Rialto, Poetry London, TriQuarterly Review, Boston Review, Callaloo and Wasa#ri. He is a Trustee for the Arvon Foundation and the Ministry of Stories, and a member of the Malika’s Poetry Kitchen collective. nickmakoha.com

Razia Iqbal

Razia Iqbal 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

Victor Ehikhamenor is a Nigerian multimedia artist, photographer and writer. He has been prolific in producing abstract, symbolic and politically/historically motivated works. A 2020 National Artist in Residence at the Neon Museum, Las Vegas, Nevada, Ehikhamenor is also a 2016 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellow. He has held several solo exhibitions and his works have been included in numerous group exhibitions and biennales, including: The 57th Venice Biennale as part of the Nigerian Pavilion (2017), 5th Mediations Biennale in Poznan, Poland (2016), The 12th Dak’art Biennale in Dakar, Senegal (2016), Biennale Jogja XIII, Indonesia (2015). As a writer he has published fiction and critical essays with academic journals, magazines and newspapers round the world including New York Times, Guernica Magazine, BBC, CNN Online, Washington Post, etc. Ehikhamenor 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

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.  Born in Zimbabwe, and educated there and at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, London, she was a founder member of SWRadio Africa, Zimbabwe’s first independent radio station (for which she was deemed “an enemy of the state” and banned from her home country), and of the Harare International Festival of the Arts. She serves on the board of the charities English PEN & Developing Artists.

JUDGES - 2020

Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp CBE

Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp CBE is a key figure in the UK arts and culture scene with over 35 years professional experience in the sector. He began his career as a dancer; as one of the leading dance artists of his generation, he performed for 13 years with the internationally-acclaimed London Contemporary Dance Theatre and then with other leading companies during a 25-year career as a performer, choreographer, teacher and director. From 2007 to 2016, he was Chief Executive of The Place, the UK’s leading centre for contemporary dance development. He took up post as Director of The Africa Centre at the end of May 2018, in its new home in Southwark, London. He is a devoted champion of the arts, cultural learning, creativity and diversity, and frequently presents as a keynote speaker in a variety of contexts, from schools to leadership courses, industry related events and the corporate sector. He is a regular contributor to Speakers for Schools. He has served on various arts Boards, including The Royal Opera House and The Royal Opera House Benevolent Fund. He is currently a Patron of Akademi and The Place; a Trustee of Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures, and the Chineke! Foundation and Orchestra; he is also a School Governor. He has appeared in eight successive editions of the annual Powerlist of Britain’s most influential people of African and African Caribbean heritage, as well as in Who’s Who. In 2003 Kenneth was made an OBE in recognition of his services to dance, and in June 2017 was made a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list, also in recognition of his services to dance.

Audrey Brown

Audrey Brown is 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. She cut her journalistic teeth on progressive newspapers like Vrye Weekblad and the then Weekly Mail - now Mail and Guardian - in the late '80s and early '90s in South Africa. Audrey studied Film Criticism and Documentary Film Making at Varan Institute in Paris, and holds a BA Journalism degree from Rhodes University. She also studied for a Masters degree at the University of Wales, College at Cardiff. Before joining the BBC in London, Audrey was one of the founding curators for the groundbreaking Women's Gaol at Constitution Hill in South Africa. Audrey lives in London and travels the world, making radio documentaries and reporting on the lives of people in Africa and the diaspora. She is usually found on air, on her way somewhere, or lost in a book.

Gabriel Gbadamosi

Gabriel Gbadamosi is 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. He was AHRC Creative Fellow in British, European and African performance at the Pinter Centre, Goldsmiths, a Judith E. Wilson Fellow for creative writing at Cambridge University and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at City & Guilds of London Art School where he is now a Trustee. Plays include Abolition (Bristol Old Vic), Eshu’s Faust (Jesus College, Cambridge), Hotel Orpheu (Schaubühne, Berlin), Shango (DNA, Amsterdam), Stop and Search (Arcola Theatre) and for radio The Long, Hot Summer of ’76 (BBC Radio 3) which won the first Richard Imison Award. He presented the flagship arts and ideas programme Night Waves for BBC Radio 3, was a director of The Society of Authors and of Wasafiri Magazine for International Contemporary Writing and is a Trustee of the Arcola Theatre, London.

Ebissé Wakjira-Rouw

Ebissé Wakjira-Rouw is an Ethiopian-born non-fiction editor, podcaster, publisher and policy advisor at the Dutch Council for Culture in the Netherlands. She co-founded Dipsaus, a podcast, online magazine, talent development platform and a publishing imprint with Uitgeverij Pluim. She has worked as a non-fiction editor at Uitgeverij AUP and co-edited the ground-breaking anthology, “BLACK: Afro-European Literature in the Low Countries” (Dutch, 2017), first of its kind available in the Dutch language. She is also a member of the curatorial team of the International Winternachten Literary Festival in The Hague. www.dipsaus.org

James Murua

James Murua is 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. His online space www.jamesmurua.com , which focuses on literary news and reviews was created in 2013 and is the number one blog on African literature today. This blog was nominated for "Best Creative Writing Blog" for the 2018 Bloggers Association of Kenya Awards. He was also announced as Best Writer “Theatre, Art and Culture” at Kenya’s Sanaa Theatre Awards and listed as one of the top men in digital in Kenya in 2018. His Podcast “The African Literary Podcast” was nominated for Podcast of the Year at the Bloggers Association of Kenya Awards 2019. James Murua has conducted workshops on blogging and social media in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi and has been a media consultant for the Goethe Institut, Nairobi. He was editor for The Star newspaper in Kenya for five years and a columnist for nine where he was voted “Columnist of the Year” in 2009. He has also contributed to Quartz Africa, Management Magazine (Kenya), The Daily Nation (Kenya), The Nairobian (Kenya), DigifyAfrica.com (South Africa), Johannesburg Review of Books (South Africa), and Africa Independent (South Africa).

JUDGES - 2019

PETER KIMANI

Peter Kimani started his career as a journalist and is the author of several works of poetry and fiction, most recently, the historical fiction, Dance of the Jakaranda, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The novel was nominated for the 2018 Hurston-Wright Legacy Awards, and longlisted for the Big Books Prize run by Hearst, the UK’s biggest magazine publisher, and the People’s Book Prize, chaired by bestselling British author, Frederick Forsyth.

Born in 1971 in Kenya, Kimani earned his doctorate in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Programme in 2014. He had a long stint as a journalist in Kenya, rising to senior editor at The Standard—the oldest newspaper in the region. He toured the continent extensively on assignment, covering conflicts from Darfur to Somalia, while documenting reconstruction efforts, from South Sudan to Somaliland. His work has also appeared in The Guardian, The New African, Sky News, and the Daily Nation.

Kimani has taught at the University of Houston and Amherst College in the US, and is presently on the faculty of the Aga Khan University’s Graduate School of Media and Communications in Nairobi.

Sefi Atta

Sefi Atta was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1964 and currently divides her time between the United States, England and Nigeria. She is the author of Everything Good Will Come (2005), News from Home (2010), Swallow (2010), A Bit of Difference (2013), Drama Queen (2018), The Bead Collector (2019) and the forthcoming Sefi Atta: Selected Plays (2019). She qualified as a Chartered Accountant in England, a Certified Public Accountant in the United States, and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She was shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2006. Atta was a juror for the 2010 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and has received several literary awards for her works, including the 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and the 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. In 2015, a critical study of her novels and short stories, Writing Contemporary Nigeria: How Sefi Atta Illuminates African Culture and Tradition, was published by Cambria Press. Also, a playwright, her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC and her stage plays have been performed and published internationally.

Margie Orford

Margie Orford is an internationally acclaimed writer. Her Clare Hart novels – a literary crime fiction series that explores violence and its effects in South Africa – are published in the USA and the UK and have been widely translated into more than ten languages. They include Like Clockwork (2006), Blood Rose (2006), Gallows Hill (2009), Daddy’s Girl (2011), and Water Music (2013). They have led to her being described by The Weekender as the ‘queen of South African crime-thriller writers.’ She is also an award-winning journalist who writes for papers in the United Kingdom and South Africa. Apart from her fiction, she writes regularly about crime, gender violence, politics and freedom of expression, and literature. She has written a number of children’s books and several works of non-fiction on subjects ranging from climate change to rural development. She was born in London to South African parents but grew up in Namibia and South Africa where she was educated at the University of Cape Town. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1999 and has a Masters in Comparative Literature from the Graduate School of the City University of New York. She was the John Tilney Writer in Residence at the University of York in 2015 and is a Civitella Ranieri Fellow. She is a member of the executive board of PEN International, an Honorary Fellow at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, the patron of Rape Crisis and of the children’s book charity, the Little Hands Trust.

Scott Taylor

Scott Taylor is professor and director of the African Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Originally from New York, he has studied, worked, and traveled widely in Africa for three decades, and has resided in both Zambia and Zimbabwe. He received his MA and Ph. D. in political science from Emory University, and an AB in Government from Dartmouth College. As an academic, his research and teaching interests lie in the areas of African politics and political economy, with a particular emphasis on governance and political and economic reform. His articles have appeared in numerous political science and area studies journals, and he the author of four books: Politics in Southern Africa: Transition and Transformation; Culture and Customs of Zambia; Business and the State in Southern Africa: The Politics of Economic Reform; and Globalization and the Cultures of Business in Africa: From Patrimonialism to Profit. He has served as consultant for numerous organizations, including DFID, USAID, the African Development Bank, the World Bank, and the Carter Center, and as an advisor to Freedom House, as well as other organizations and firms in Africa and the US. Scott has served as an election observer in a number of African countries, including in Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

olufemi terry

Olufemi Terry, a freelance writer, essayist and journalist based in Washington, DC, is the Sierra-Leone born winner of the 2010 Caine Prize for African Writing. His fiction has been translated into French and German, and published most recently in the One World Two global anthology of short stories. As a panel juror for international arts and writing prizes and scholarships, he has played an integral role in the award to date of over £450,000 to writers and visual artists.

JUDGES - 2018

From L-R: 2018 Panel of Judges with the prizewinner, Makena Onjerika (centre): Lola Shoneyin, Dinaw Mengestu, Ahmed Rajab and Henrietta Rose-Innes

CHAIR OF JUDGES: DINAW MENGESTU

Dinaw Mengestu is a graduate of Georgetown University and of Columbia University’s M.F.A programme in fiction. In 2007 the National Book Foundation named him a “5 under 35” honouree, and in 2012 he was selected as a MacArthur Fellow. Dinaw has written four novels: The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (2007); Children of the Revolution (2007); How to Read the Air (2010); and All Our Names (2014). An active journalist, his work has appeared in various publications, including Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal.  

Henrietta Rose-Innes

Henrietta Rose-Innes is a South Africa author based in Cape Town. She has published four novels and a collection of short stories, and is currently completing a fifth novel, Stone Plant, due in 2018. Her work has been widely published and translated into several languages, with her novel Nineveh winning the 2015 François Sommer Literary Prize in French translation. In 2012, her story ‘Sanctuary’ took second place in the BBC International Short Story Competition. A shortlistee for the Caine Prize in 2007, Henrietta was awarded the 2008 Caine Prize for her story 'Poison', which also won the Southern African PEN Literary Award.

Lola Shoneyin

Lola Shoneyin is a Nigerian writer, whose published work includes poems and children’s books. Her debut novel, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, was published in 2010 and went on to win the 2011 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and the 2011 Ken Saro-Wiwa Prose Prize. Shoneyin is the Director of Ake Arts and Book Festival, an annual literary and cultural event that supports and celebrates artistic and cultural innovation in Africa, on African soil. She is also the creative director of the new Kaduna Book and Arts Festival which first took place in Kaduna State, Nigeria in 2018.

Ahmed Rajab

Ahmed Rajab has worked for the BBC World Service, Index on Censorship, Africa Events, the seminal Africa Analysis (which he edited for 20 years) as well as UNESCO. From 2006-2009 he was Head of Newsroom (Middle East/Asia Bureau in Dubai) for IRIN, the then UN humanitarian news agency. In addition to being a regular columnist for Tanzania’s premier weekly Raia Mwema, he now works as a consultant and is affiliated to the Kaduna-based Gusau Institute. Ahemed also writes poetry and his work is included in the anthology African New Voices (Longman, 1997)

Judges - 2017

CHAIR OF JUDGES NII AYIKWEI PARKEs

A 2007 recipient of Ghana’s ACRAG award, Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a writer, editor and socio-cultural commentator. He is the author of the hybrid novel, Tail of the Blue Bird, which has been translated into Dutch, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan and Japanese. Originally shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Prize, the book has gone on to win the Prix Baudelaire, Prix Mahogany and Prix Laure Bataillon. Nii serves on the editorial board of World Literature Today and in 2014 he was named as one of Africa's 39 most promising authors of the new generation. He is the director of the Ama Ata Aidoo Centre for Creative Writing at the African University College of Communications in Accra, the first of its kind in West Africa.

monica arac de nyeko

Monica Arac de Nyeko is from Uganda. She won the Caine Prize for African writing in 2007 for her story ‘Jambula Tree’. In 2014, she was named on the Africa39 list - as one of the most promising writers under the age of 40. She currently works for an international development agency in the Middle East.  She is working on a novel.

ghAZI GHEBLAWI 

Ghazi Gheblawi was born in Tripoli, Libya, where he studied medicine, and published his first works of fiction. He is the author of two collections of short stories in Arabic and has published various literary works in English in several publications in the UK. He runs and hosts Imtidad Cultural Blog and Podcast, which focuses on literature and arts in Britain and the Arab world. He was recently appointed a trustee of The Banipal Trust for Arab Literature. He is currently an editor at Darf Publishers an independent publishing house based in London.

ricardo ortiz

Ricardo Ortiz is Associate Professor of US Latino Literature and Chair of the English Department at Georgetown University. Professor Ortiz is the author of Cultural Erotics in Cuban America (2007) and he has published articles in such journals as Studies in English Literature, The Yale Journal of Criticism, Social Text, Modern Drama, Contemporary Literature and GLQ, in addition to contributing chapters to numerous collected volumes, including The Queer Sixties, Aftermaths: Exile, Migration and Diaspora Reconsidered, Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader, and The Cambridge Companion to Latino American Literature. He is currently working on a book entitled The Testimonial Imagination: US Latino Literature and Cold War Geopolitics in the Americas.

Ranka Primorac

Ranka Primorac was born in Zagreb, Croatia. She lived for many years in Harare, Zimbabwe, and is currently based in London. Ranka lectures at the Department of English at the University of Southampton, where one of her duties is supervising doctoral students of Creative Writing. She holds degrees from the Universities of Zagreb, Zimbabwe and Nottingham Trent. Her academic publications engage with the literatures and cultures of Southern Africa; her monograph is entitled The Place of Tears: The Novel and Politics in Modern Zimbabwe; she sits on the Editorial Board of The Journal of Commonwealth Studies and the Advisory Board of Journal of Southern African Studies. She recently became a Senior Research Associate with the Department of English at the university currently known as Rhodes in South Africa. Together with Yale’s Stephanie Newell, she co-edits the Boydell and Brewer African Articulations monograph series.

Judges - 2016

Judges - 2015

Judges - 2014

Judges - 2013

Gus Casely-Hayford (Chair)

Dr Gus Casely-Hayford is an art historian and broadcaster, currently holding the position of Research Associate at SOAS. After completing his PhD in African history, Gus proceeded to teach a number of degree and MA courses in international culture. His second Lost Kingdoms of Africa series was broadcast on the BBC in early 2012. Gus was the director of Africa05 and has advised high-profile institutions such as the United Nations and the Canadian, Dutch and Norwegian Arts Councils.

Nathan Hensley

Nathan K. Hensley is Assistant Professor of English at Georgetown University, where his work and teaching focus on nineteenth-century British literature, critical theory, and the novel. His critical articles have appeared in Victorian Studies, Novel: A Forum on Fiction, and a collection, The Politics of Gender in Anthony Trollope's Novels: New Readings for the Twenty-First Century. Hensley holds degrees from Vassar College (B.A.), the University of Notre Dame (M.A.), and Duke (Ph.D), where he was also a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow. He was born and raised in Fresno, California.

Leila Aboulela

Leila Aboulela won the first Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000. Leila adapted her winning story The Museum for Radio 4. BBC radio has adapted her work extensively and broadcast a number of her plays including The Mystic Life and the historical drama The Lion of Chechnya. Her third novel Lyrics Alley, was published in January 2010 by Weidenfeld Nicolson. Set in 1950s Sudan, Lyrics Alley is the Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. It was long-listed for the Orange Prize and short-listed for a Regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Leila grew up in Khartoum and has lived much of her adult life in Scotland.

Sokari Douglas Camp

Sokari Douglas Camp was born in Buguma, Rivers State, Nigeria. She studied fine art at Central School of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art. She has had more than 40 solo shows worldwide, and has work in permanent collections at The Smithsonian Museum, Washington D.C., Setagaya Museum, Tokyo and the British Museum, London. In 2005 she became an Honorary Fellow of University of the Arts London and was awarded a CBE in recognition of her services to art. 

John Sutherland

John Sutherland is Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus at UCL. In a long career in Britain and America, John has written many books (most recently Lives of the Novelists: a History of Fiction in 294 Lives) and has judged a number of literary prizes including the James Tait Black, the Booker, the Man Booker, and the Encore. He believes that, in the huge profusion of published literature at the present time, prizes have a necessary and highly useful function in raising quality and discrimination. And, in the case of the Caine Prize, directing attention to areas of creativity.