Nigerians dominate all women Miles Morland Scholarship

Three Nigerians have emerged winners of the 2015 Miles Morland Writing Scholarship in a year that saw five women being awarded the lucrative prize. In an announcement earlier in the week, the Miles Morland Foundation, which awards the year-long scholarship revealed a list of five women who will be awarded £18, 000 over the course […]

Three Nigerians have emerged winners of the 2015 Miles Morland Writing Scholarship in a year that saw five women being awarded the lucrative prize.
In an announcement earlier in the week, the Miles Morland Foundation, which awards the year-long scholarship revealed a list of five women who will be awarded £18, 000 over the course of 2016 to enable them undertake the proposed work.
Noo Saro Wiwa, author of ‘Looking for Transwonderland’ leads the list of Nigerians. She is awarded the prize for her proposed work of non-fiction.
Her compatriots, writer and filmmaker Akwaeke Emezi and Bolaji Odofin, who had previously won the BBC International playwriting completion were also awarded the scholarship to enable them undertake a work of fiction in 2016.
The other winners are South African novelist Karen Jennings (Fiction)  and Sudan’s Fatin Abbas (non-fiction).
This year, the foundation awarded two non-fiction awards of £27,000 to be paid over a year and a half to allow the scholars time for research. The awards are based on submissions which include a book proposal and an excerpt of published writing.
Michela Wrong, the Foundation’s Literary Director commented: “Women writers began emerging as an unstoppable force a year ago but this year it was a rout. All five scholarships have gone to women, despite the fact that overall there were more male than female applicants. Women dominated both the long list sent to readers and the shortlist that went to the judges. Of the twenty-one writers on the short list nineteen were women.”
 Mr. Miles Morland, whose foundation awards the scholarship said, “This shows that women are the superior gender but we knew that already, didn’t we?”
According to Wrong, the number of entries for the prize was 345 witnessing a drop from the 482 in 2014.
“The overall number has dropped, but we felt that individual applications were of a higher quality, suggesting that prospective writers now have a better grasp of what the scholarship offers and entails,” she said.
“The applications came from across the continent, 23 African countries in all, with Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya dominating as usual. The Judges gave three Scholarships to Nigerians, all very different writers. We were impressed by the explosion of literary energy coming from West Africa. We know there is also a wealth of creativity and talent in East Africa and hope that next year that will be reflected in the Scholarships.”