In its seventeenth year the Caine Prize for African Writing has received a record breaking number of eligible entries: 166 short stories from writers representing 23 African countries. The 2016 judges, who were announced in London last month, will meet in early May to decide on the shortlisted stories, which will be announced shortly thereafter. 

The five judges of this year’s Caine Prize for African Writing are today announced in London. The panel of judges will be chaired by the distinguished author and broadcaster Delia Jarrett-Macauley. She will be joined by the acclaimed film, television and voice actor, Adjoa Andoh; the writer and founding member of the Nairobi based writers’ collective, Storymoja, and founder of the Storymoja Festival, Muthoni Garland; Associate Professor and Director of African American Studies at Georgetown University, Washington DC, Dr Robert J Patterson; and South African writer, and 2006 Caine Prize winner, Mary Watson.

Zambia’s Namwali Serpell has won the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa’s leading literary award, for her short story entitled “The Sack” from Africa39 (Bloomsbury, London, 2014). The Chair of Judges, Zoë Wicomb, announced Namwali Serpell as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a dinner held this evening (Monday, 6 July) at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

The five writer shortlist for the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing has been announced by Chair of judges, award-winning South African writer Zoë Wicomb. In a sign of the established calibre to be found in African writing and as the Caine Prize matures in its sixteenth year, the shortlist includes one past winner and two previously shortlisted writers.

Chair of judges, Zoë Wicomb described the shortlist as, "an exciting crop of well-crafted stories."

Prudential plc, one of the world's leading financial services groups, and Groupe Nduom, a family business group of Ghanaian and American origin operating in the financial, hospitality, media and other industries, are the primary supporters of this year's Caine Prize for African Writing workshop taking place in Ghana this month. The Caine Prize, known as Africa's leading literary award, has held twelve workshops in Africa since 2003.

The Caine Prize has signed a deal with the Nigerian publishing company, Lantern Books, to publish the 2014 edition of the Caine Prize anthology, The Gonjon Pin and Other Stories.Lantern Books have committed to printing 5,000 copies of the anthology which will be available at the Ake Arts & Book Festival on 18-22 November in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria.

The Council of the Caine Prize for African Writing pays tribute to Nadine Gordimer, a Patron of the Caine Prize, who has died at her home in Johannesburg, aged ninety. Fellow Patron and acclaimed South African author JM Coetzee, said Gordimer, "as a writer and a human being, responded with exemplary courage and creative energy to the great challenge of her times, the system of apartheid unjustly imposed and heartlessly implemented on the South African people". He added "Looking to the great realist novelists of the 19th Century as models, she produced a body of work in which the South Africa of the late 20th Century is indelibly recorded for all time."