Efemia Chela

Last updated

Efemia Chela (born 1991) [1] is a Zambian-Ghanaian writer, literary critic, and editor. "Chicken", [2] her first published story, was shortlisted [3] for the 2014 Caine Prize for African Writing. [4] Chela has had short stories and poems published in New Internationalist , [5] Wasafiri , [6] [7] Token [8] and Pen Passages: Africa. [9] In 2016, she co-edited the Short Story Day Africa collection, [10] [11] Migrations. [12] She was also the Andrew W. Mellon Writer-in-Residence at Rhodes University in 2018. She is currently the Francophone and Contributing editor for The Johannesburg Review of Books . [13] [14]

Born in Zambia, Chela grew up in England, Ghana, Botswana and South Africa. She graduated with a BA degree in French, Politics, and Classical civilizations from Rhodes University in South Africa, [15] and at the Institut D’Etudes Politiques in Aix-en-Provence, France. [16]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie</span> Nigerian writer (born 1977)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer whose works include novels, short stories and nonfiction. She was described in The Times Literary Supplement as "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors [that] is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature", particularly in her second home, the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Binyavanga Wainaina</span> Kenyan writer and editor (1971–2019)

Kenneth Binyavanga Wainaina was a Kenyan author, journalist and 2002 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. In 2003, he was the founding editor of Kwani? literary magazine. In April 2014, Time magazine included Wainaina in its annual Time 100 as one of the "Most Influential People in the World".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caine Prize</span> Annual award for best original short story by an African writer

The Caine Prize for African Writing is an annual literary award for the best original 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 plc and of the Booker Prize management committee. Because of this connection with the Booker Prize, the Caine Prize is sometimes called the "African Booker". The prize is known as the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. The Chair of the Board is Ellah Wakatama, appointed in 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ</span> Kenyan poet and author (born 1971)

Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ is a Kenyan American poet, author, and academic. He is associate professor of literatures in English at Cornell University and co-founder of the Safal-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Writing. His father is the author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. His family was deeply impacted by the bloody British suppression of the Mau Mau revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chika Unigwe</span> Nigerian-born Igbo author (born 1974)

Chika Nina Unigwe is a Nigerian-born Igbo author who writes in English and Dutch. In April 2014 she was selected for the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature. Previously based in Belgium, she now lives in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernardine Evaristo</span> British author and academic (born 1959)

Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo is a British author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, making her the first Black woman to win the Booker. Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820.

Stacy M. Hardy is a writer, a teacher, a researcher, and an editor at Chimurenga, a pan-African journal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NoViolet Bulawayo</span> Zimbabwean author (born 1981)

NoViolet Bulawayo is the pen name of Elizabeth Zandile Tshele, a Zimbabwean author. In 2012, the National Book Foundation named her a "5 under 35" honoree. She was named one of the Top 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine in 2014. Her debut novel, We Need New Names, was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize, and her second novel, Glory, was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, making her "the first Black African woman to appear on the Booker list twice".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ellah Wakatama Allfrey</span> Zimbabwean editor and literary critic (born 1966)

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 series editor of the Kwani? Manuscript Project and the editor of the anthologies Africa39 and Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction.

Beatrice Lamwaka is a Ugandan writer. She was shortlisted for the 2011 Caine Prize for her story "Butterfly Dreams".

Jackee Budesta Batanda is a Ugandan journalist, writer and entrepreneur. She is a senior managing partner with Success Spark Brand Limited, a communications and educational company, and a co-founder of Mastermind Africa Group Limited, a business-networking group. In 2006, Batanda worked as a peace writer at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego. She was later awarded a research fellowship at the highly competitive Justice in Africa fellowship Programme with the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2008. In 2010, Batanda was International Writer-in-Residence at the Housing Authors and Literature Denmark, where she commenced work on her novel, A Lesson in Forgetting. In 2012, she was also featured in The Times alongside 19 young women shaping the future of Africa. That same year she was also a finalist in the 2012 Trust Women journalism Awards. She has been writer-in-residence at Lancaster University in the UK. She was selected by the International Women's Media Foundation as the 2011–12 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow. During the fellowship, she studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies and other Boston-area universities, and worked at The New York Times and The Boston Globe.

Carolann "C. A." Davids is a South African writer and editor who is known for the novel The Blacks of Cape Town, published in 2013, and her short stories

Maya Jaggi is a British writer, literary critic, editor and cultural journalist. In the words of the Open University, from which Jaggi received an honorary doctorate in 2012, she "has had a transformative influence in the last 25 years in extending the map of international writing today". Jaggi has been a contributor to a wide range of publications including The Guardian, Financial Times, The Independent, The Literary Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, New Statesman, Wasafiri, Index on Censorship, and Newsweek, and is particularly known for her profiles of writers, artists, film-makers, musicians and others. She is also a broadcaster and presenter on radio and television. Jaggi is the niece of actor and food writer Madhur Jaffrey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abubakar Adam Ibrahim</span> Nigerian writer and journalist

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim is a Nigerian writer and journalist. He was described by German broadcaster Deutsche Welle as a northern Nigerian "literary provocateur" amidst the international acclaim his award-winning novel Season of Crimson Blossoms received in 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Namwali Serpell</span> Zambian feminist academic and writer (born 1980)

Carla 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Busby</span> Publisher, writer and editor (born 1944)

Margaret Yvonne Busby,, Hon. FRSL, also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisher when she and Clive Allison (1944–2011) co-founded the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby in the 1960s. She edited the anthology Daughters of Africa (1992), and its 2019 follow-up New Daughters of Africa. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature. In 2020 she was voted one of the "100 Great Black Britons". In 2021, she was honoured with the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lidudumalingani Mqombothi</span> South African writer

Lidudumalingani Mqombothi is a South African writer, film-maker and photographer. His short story "Memories We Lost" won the 2016 Caine Prize for African Writing.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Troy Onyango</span> Kenyan writer, editor and lawyer (born 1993)

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.

Edwige-Renée Dro is a writer, translator and literary activist from Côte d'Ivoire. She is co-founder of the literature collective Abidjan Lit.

References

  1. "Efemia Chela". Pontas Agency. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
  2. The Caine Prize for African Writing 2014. New Internationalist. 14 July 2014. ISBN   9781780261751.
  3. Guardian staff (23 April 2014). "Caine Prize shortlist showcases 'golden age' for the African short story". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 6 December 2018.
  4. "An Unexpected Prize – by Efemia Chela". Caine Prize. 20 November 2017. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
  5. "World Fiction Special". New Internationalist. 1 October 2016. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
  6. "Issue 88". Wasafiri. Winter 2016. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
  7. "Among the Contributors", Wasafiri, 31:4, 2016, 100–102, DOI: 10.1080/02690055.2016.1221124
  8. "Token Magazine Issue 2". Token. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
  9. Chela, Efemia (3 April 2015). "Petty Blood Sport". Pen America. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
  10. Karen, Jennings (12 June 2014). Feast, Famine and Potluck: Short Story Day Africa. Modjaji Books. ISBN   9780620588874.
  11. Zadok, Rachel; Mulgrew, Nick (21 March 2016). Water: New Short Story Fiction from Africa: An Anthology from Short Story Day Africa. New Internationalist. ISBN   9781780263113.
  12. "Books". Short Story Day Africa. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
  13. "Efemia Chela". Pontas Agency. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
  14. Malec, Jennifer (7 April 2017). "The JRB Masthead". The Johannesburg Review of Books. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
  15. "Efemia Chela". Open Book Festival. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
  16. Chela, Efemia (3 April 2015). "Petty Blood Sport". PEN America. Retrieved 6 December 2018.