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The Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship, also called the Morland Writing Scholarships or the MilesMorland Writing Scholarship is an annual financial scholarship awarded to four to six African writers to enable them write a fiction or non-fiction book in the English language. [1]
The grant is between £18,000 and £27,000 (fiction or nonfiction respectively), given over twelve to eighteen months to each chosen writer. The only requirements are that the writer submit 10,000 words every month and, if they ever get a book contract out of their writing output, donate 20% back to the foundation.
The award was established in 2013 by Miles Morland, a British citizen and philanthropist, through the Miles Morland Foundation (MMF), a UK registered charity which makes grants in areas reflecting its founder's interests. [2]
It is one of the most prestigious writing scholarships on the African continent. [3]
It is currently judged by three writers and publishers: Muthoni Garland, Cassava Republic Press director Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, and Chuma Nwokolo. [4]
The prizewinners are as follows:
The Caine Prize for African Writing is an annual literary award for the best short story by an African writer, whether in Africa or elsewhere, published in the English language. Founded in the United Kingdom in 2000, the £10,000 prize was named in memory of businessman and philanthropist Sir Michael Harris Caine, former Chairman of Booker Group and of the Booker Prize management committee. The Caine Prize is sometimes called the "African Booker". The Chair of the Board is Ellah Wakatama, appointed in 2019.
Michela Wrong, is a British journalist and author who spent more than two decades writing about Africa. Her postings as a journalist began in Europe and then West, Central and East Africa. She has worked for Reuters, the BBC, and the Financial Times before becoming a freelance writer.
Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo was a Kenyan professor, playwright, author, activist and poet. She was a literary critic and professor of Literature, Creative Writing and Research Methods in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University. She was forced into exile in 1982 from Kenya during the Daniel Arap Moi dictatorship for activism and moved to teach in the United States, and later Zimbabwe. She taught Orature, Literature, and Creative Writing.
Doreen Baingana is a Ugandan writer. Her short story collection, Tropical Fish, won the Grace Paley Award for Short Fiction in 2003 and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first book, Africa Region in 2006. Stories in it were finalists for the Caine Prize in 2004 and 2005. She was a Caine Prize finalist for the third time in 2021 and has received many other awards listed below.
The Brunel International African Poetry Prize is a literary award aimed at the "development, celebration and promotion of poetry from Africa." The prize is sponsored by Brunel University and Bernardine Evaristo. In the past it has been partnered by Commonwealth Writers and the African Poetry Book Fund USA. It comes with a £3,000 honorarium. It is aimed at unpublished poets with a manuscript of ten poems.
Ellah Wakatama, OBE, Hon. FRSL, is the Editor-at-Large at Canongate Books, a senior Research Fellow at Manchester University, and Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. She was the founding Publishing Director of the Indigo Press. A London-based editor and critic, she was on the judging panel of the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the 2015 Man Booker Prize. In 2016, she was a Visiting Professor & Global Intercultural Scholar at Goshen College, Indiana, and was the Guest Master for the 2016 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation international journalism fellowship in Cartagena, Colombia. The former deputy editor of Granta magazine, she was the senior editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House and an assistant editor at Penguin. She is the series editor of the Kwani? Manuscript Project and the editor of the anthologies Africa39 and Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction.
Elnathan John is a Nigerian novelist, satirist and lawyer whose stories have twice been shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing.
Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún is a Nigerian linguist, writer, translator, scholar, and cultural activist. His work and influence span the fields of education, language technology, literature, journalism, and linguistics. He is the recipient of the 2016 Premio Ostana "Special Prize" for Writings in the Mother Tongue for his work in language advocacy. He writes in Yoruba and English, and is currently the Africa editor of the Best Literary Translations anthology, published by Deep Vellum.
Ayesha Harruna Attah is a Ghanaian-born fiction writer. She lives in Senegal.
Brittle Paper is an online literary magazine styled as an "African literary blog" published weekly in the English language. Its focus is on "build(ing) a vibrant African literary scene." It was founded by Ainehi Edoro. Since its founding in 2010, Brittle Paper has published fiction, poetry, essays, creative nonfiction and photography from both established and upcoming African writers and artists in the continent and around the world. A member of The Guardian Books Network, it has been described as "the village square of African literature", as "Africa's leading literary journal", and as "one of Africa's most on the ball and talked-about literary publications". In 2014, the magazine was named a "Go-To Book Blog" by Publishers Weekly, who described it as "an essential source of news about new work by writers of color outside of the United States."
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ is a Nigerian writer. Her 2017 debut novel, Stay With Me, won the 9mobile Prize for Literature and the Prix Les Afriques. She was awarded The Future Awards Africa Prize for Arts and Culture in 2017.
Yewande Omotoso is a South African-based novelist, architect and designer, who was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria. She currently lives in Johannesburg. Her two published novels have earned her considerable attention, including winning the South African Literary Award for First-Time Published Author, being shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the M-Net Literary Awards 2012, and the 2013 Etisalat Prize for Literature, and being longlisted for the 2017 Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction. She is the daughter of Nigerian writer Kole Omotoso, and the sister of filmmaker Akin Omotoso.
Saraba is a nonprofit literary magazine published by the Saraba Literary Trust in Nigeria. First published in February 2009, it aims "to create unending voices by publishing the finest emerging writers, with focus on writers from Nigeria, and other parts of Africa". It has become one of the most successful literary magazines in and out of Africa.
Tony Adam Mochama is a Kenyan poet, writer, author and a senior journalist at The Nation Media Group. Mochama is a three-time winner of the Burt Awards for African Young Adult Literature and he is also a recipient of the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship.
Troy Onyango is a Kenyan writer, editor and lawyer. His work has appeared in journals and magazines including Prairie Schooner, Wasafiri, Caine Prize Anthology, Brittle Paper, and Transition Magazine issue 121, for which his short story "The Transfiguration" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His short story "For What Are Butterflies Without Their Wings" won the fiction prize for the inaugural Nyanza Literary Festival (NALIF) Prize.
Otosirieze Obi-Young is a Nigerian writer, editor, culture journalist and curator. He is editor of Open Country Mag. He was editor of Folio Nigeria, a then CNN affiliate, and former deputy editor of Brittle Paper. In 2019, he won the inaugural The Future Awards Africa Prize for Literature. He has been described as among the "top curators and editors from Africa."
Edwige-Renée Dro is a writer, translator and literary activist from Côte d'Ivoire. She is co-founder of the literature collective Abidjan Lit.
Idza Luhumyo is a Kenyan short story writer, whose work explores Kenyan coastal identities. In July 2020, Luhumyo was announced as the inaugural recipient of the Margaret Busby New Daughters of Africa Award. She was the winner of the 2021 Short Story Day Africa Prize with her story "Five Years Next Sunday", which also won the 2022 Caine Prize.
Gloria Mwaniga is a Kenyan writer, educator and columnist for the Daily Nation and The EastAfrican. She is a graduate of the University of Nairobi and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Writing Workshop in Nigeria. In 2019, she was awarded a Miles Morland Writing Scholarship, and in 2022 her story "Boyi" was awarded the inaugural African Land Policy Centre Story Prize. Her story was subsequently included in Finding Ground and other stories: ALPC Anthology of short stories on Land in Africa. Her work has appeared in The Johannesburg Review of Books and The White Review.
Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is a Zimbabwean novelist and filmmaker.
