Caine Prize receives record-breaking number of entries

The 2015 judges, who were announced at Ake Arts and Books Festival in Abeokuta, Nigeria at the end of last year, will meet in late April to decide on the shortlisted stories, which will be announced shortly thereafter. Each shortlisted writer will be awarded £500. The award-winning South African author Zoë Wicomb is chairing the judging […]

The 2015 judges, who were announced at Ake Arts and Books Festival in Abeokuta, Nigeria at the end of last year, will meet in late April to decide on the shortlisted stories, which will be announced shortly thereafter. Each shortlisted writer will be awarded £500.
 The award-winning South African author Zoë Wicomb is chairing the judging panel. She will be joined by the distinguished television and radio journalist, and Chairperson of the Royal African Society Zeinab Badawi,  Indian author and Man Booker Prize shortlistee Neel Mukherjee, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Georgetown Cóilín Parsons, and Brian Chikwava, the winner of the Caine Prize in 2004.
 Last year 140 qualifying stories were submitted to the judges from 17 African countries.
 Caine Prize Director Dr Lizzy Attree said, “The emergence of new Prizes for African authors and the growth of publishing on the continent means that African literature is really thriving in the 21st Century and this is reflected in the increase in eligible entries to the Caine Prize year on year.”
 For the first time the new Weston Library (formerly the New Bodleian) in Oxford, UK will host the Caine Prize award ceremony as one of its first official functions in Blackwell Hall on Monday 6 July.
 The five shortlisted stories, alongside the stories written at the annual Caine Prize workshop, are published annually by New Internationalist in the UK and publishers in eight African countries; ‘amaBooks (Zimbabwe), Bookworld Publishers (Zambia), Cassava Republic (Nigeria), FEMRITE (Uganda),  Jacana Media (South Africa), Kwani? (Kenya), Langaa Research and Publishing CIG (Cameroon), Lantern Books (Nigeria) and Sub-Saharan Publishers (Ghana).
 This year’s workshop, which will be the thirteenth, will be held in Ghana.  Caine Prize workshops are held in Africa for writers who have been shortlisted for the Caine Prize and other talented writers who have come to the Prize’s attention through the selection process. Each workshop consists of 12 writers from different African countries, who convene for ten days to read and discuss work in progress and to learn from two more experienced writers, who act as tutors or animateurs.
 Included in the 2014 anthology is the story by last year’s Kenyan winner, Okwiri Oduor. Jackie Kay MBE, chair of the 2014 judging panel said of the author, “Okwiri Oduor is a writer we are all really excited to have discovered. ‘My Father’s Head’ is an uplifting story about mourning – Joycean in its reach. She exercises an extraordinary amount of control and yet the story is subtle, tender and moving. It is a story you want to return to the minute you finish it.”