Three Nigerians Make The Caine Prize for African Writing 2018 Shortlist

Three Nigerians Make The Caine Prize for African Writing 2018 Shortlist

The prestigious prize, established in 2000, awards the best short story by an African writer, and today, the judges announced the five writers who made this year’s shortlist. They include: Nonyelum Ekwempu, Stacy Hardy, Olufunke Ogundimu, Makena Onjerika and Wole Talabi.

See the full details of the writers as published on The Caine Prize for African Writing website:

• Nonyelum Ekwempu (Nigeria) for ‘American Dream’, published in Red Rock Review (2016), and republished in The Anthem. Nonyelum is a Nigerian writer and visual artist. She grew up in the bustling city of Lagos and in small villages in southwestern and southeastern Nigeria. Her art is inspired by jazz, the African immigrant experience, and the colours and vibrancy of various African cultures. She is currently a medical student at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.
• Stacy Hardy (South Africa) for ‘Involution’, published in Migrations: New Short Fiction from Africa, co-published by Short Story Day Africa and New Internationalist (2017).  Stacy Hardy is a writer and an editor at the pan African journal Chimurenga, a founder of Black Ghost Books, and a teacher at Rhodes University, South Africa. Her writing has appeared in a wide range of publications, including Pocko Times, Ctheory, Bengal Lights, Evergreen Review, Drunken Boat, Joyland, Black Sun Lit, and New Orleans Review. A collection of her short fiction, Because the Night, was published by Pocko Books in 2015. She is currently finalising a second collection to be published in 2019, and is also working on a novella.
• Olufunke Ogundimu (Nigeria) for ‘The Armed Letter Writers’, published in The African Literary Hustle (2017). Olufunke Ogundimu was born in Lagos, Nigeria. She has an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her work has been published in Dream Chasers, Nothing to See Here, Red Rock Review, New Orleans Review, and Transition Magazine. She is working on a short story collection reluctantly titled The Was Thing, and a historical novel set in the twelfth-century Oyo Kingdom, titled Memories of Three Rivers.
• Makena Onjerika (Kenya) for ‘Fanta Blackcurrant’, published in Wasafiri (2017).Makena is a graduate of the MFA Creative Writing programme at New York University, and has been published in Urban Confustions and Wasafiri. She lives in Nairobi, Kenya, and is currently working on a fantasy novel.
• Wole Talabi (Nigeria) for ‘Wednesday’s Story’, published in Lightspeed Magazine (2016). Wole is a Nigerian full-time engineer, part-time writer and some-time editor with a fondness for science fiction and fantasy. His stories have appeared in publications including Terraform, Omenana, Liquid Imagination, and The Kalahari Review. He edited These Words Expose Us, the anthology of Nigerian blog-site, The Naked Convos. He currently lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He enjoys good stories and goes scuba diving whenever he gets the chance.

Click here to read the shortlisted stories.