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.
Helon Habila Ngalabak is a Nigerian novelist and poet, whose writing has won many prizes, including the Caine Prize in 2001. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before moving in 2002 to England, where he was a Chevening Scholar at the University of East Anglia, and now teaches creative writing at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
Sarah Ladipo Manyika FRSL is a British-Nigerian writer of novels, short stories and essays and an active member of the literary community, particularly supporting and amplifying young writers and female voices. She is the author of two well-received novels, In Dependence (2009) and Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream To The Sun (2016), as well as the non-fiction collection Between Starshine and Clay: Conversations from the African Diaspora (2022), and her writing has appeared in publications including Granta, Transition, Guernica, and OZY, and previously served as founding Books Editor of OZY. Manyika's work also features in the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
Maaza Mengiste is an Ethiopian-American writer. Her novels include Beneath the Lion's Gaze (2010) and The Shadow King (2019), which was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.
The 9mobile Prize for Literature was created by Etisalat Nigeria in 2013, and is the first ever pan-African prize celebrating first-time African writers of published fiction books. Awarded annually, the prize aims to serve as a platform for the discovery of new creative talent out of the continent and invariably promote the burgeoning publishing industry in Africa. The winner receives a cash prize of £15,000 in addition to a fellowship at the University of East Anglia.
Namwali Serpell is an American and Zambian writer who teaches in the United States. In April 2014, she was named on Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with the potential and talent to define trends in African literature. Her short story "The Sack" won the 2015 Caine Prize for African fiction in English. In 2020, Serpell won the Belles-lettres category Grand Prix of Literary Associations 2019 for her debut novel The Old Drift.
Cassava Republic Press is a steering African book publishing company established in Nigeria in 2006 and headed by Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, with a focus on affordability, the need to find and develop local talent, and to publish African writers too often celebrated only in Europe and America. Cassava Republic's stated mission is "to change the way we all think about African writing. (...) to build a new body of African writing that links writers across different times and spaces." The publishing house is considered to be "at the centre of a thriving literary scene" that has seen Nigerian writers in particular, as well as writers from elsewhere on the African continent, having considerable success both at home and internationally. ThisDay newspaper has stated of the publishing house that "it is credited with innovation. From driving down the cost of books to using digital media to drive sales, Cassava has invariably sought to redefine the African narrative."
The Aké Arts and Book Festival is a literary and artistic event held annually in Nigeria. It was founded in 2013 by Lola Shoneyin, a Nigerian writer and poet, in Abeokuta. It features new and established writers from across the world, and its primary focus has been to promote, develop, and celebrate the creativity of African writers, poets, and artists. The Aké Arts and Book Festival has been described as the African continent's biggest annual gathering of literary writers, editors, critics, and readers. The festival has an official website and a dedicated magazine, known as the Aké Review.
Oil on Water is a 2010 petrofiction novel by Nigerian author Helon Habila. The novel documents the experience of two journalists as they try to rescue a kidnapped European wife in the oil landscape of the Niger Delta. The novel explores themes of both the ecological and political consequences of oil conflict and petrodollars in the delta.
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."
Imachibundu Oluwadara Onuzo is a Nigerian novelist. Her first novel, The Spider King's Daughter, won a Betty Trask Award, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Commonwealth Book Prize, and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Etisalat Prize for Literature.
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.
Odafe Atogun is a Nigerian writer. His debut novel, Taduno's Song (2016), was selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club, and he has been compared to Franz Kafka and George Orwell in critical reviews. Following his two-book deal with Canongate, Penguin Random House and Arche Verlag, Atogun's second novel, Wake Me When I’m Gone, was published in 2017. His work has been translated into several languages.
Jowhor Ile is a Nigerian writer known for his first novel, And After Many Days. In 2016, the novel was awarded the Etisalat Prize for Literature.
Ainehi Edoro is a Nigerian writer, critic and academic. She is the founder and publisher of the African literary blog Brittle Paper. She is currently an assistant professor of Global Black Literatures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her areas of research include 21st-century fiction, literature in digital/social media, The Global Anglophone Novel, African Literature, Contemporary British Fiction, Novel Theory, Political Philosophy, and Digital Humanities.
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."
The Writivism Short Story Prize and Koffi Addo Prize for Creative Nonfiction are a pair of annual literary awards for work by emerging writers living in Africa. The Writivism Short Story Prize, for short fiction, was established in 2013. The Koffi Addo Prize for Creative Nonfiction was established in 2016.
Waiting for an Angel is a 2002 political novel written by Nigeria writer Helon Habila. It was first published by New York's publishing firm W. W. Norton & Company.
The Chibok Girls styled as The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria is a 2016 non-fiction social novel by Nigerian author Helon Habila. The novel was developed due to 2014 kidnaping of 276 Chibok school girls from age 16 to 18 by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram.
Stay with Me is a novel written by Nigerian author Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀. It was first published in 2017, by Canongate Books in the UK and subsequently by Alfred A. Knopf in the US.
