And the 2015 Caine Prize winner is… Namwali Serpell!

A big congratulations to Zambia’s Namwali Serpell for winning the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing!!

Namwali Serpell is the 16th winner of the Caine Prize, which is recognized as Africa’s leading literary award for short stories. The winner was announced last night at a dinner held at the Weston Library, Oxford, England for all the shortlisted candidates.

Namwali Serpell won the £10,000 prize for her short story, ‘The Sack’. Initially I was miffed at how this year’s shortlist was more or less a dichotomy between South Africa and Nigeria, with one story from Zambia. Even though I was more in love with Elnathan’s story ‘Flying‘, I’m happy Zambia won this for once! I look forward to more of Serpell’s work in the future. Her short story, ‘The Sack’ can also be found in the Africa39 anthology which was published in October of last year (2014). Check out Africa39 to read more new short stories by young African writers, under the age of 39!

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 Read ‘The Sack’ by Namwali Serpell – here

And the 2014 Caine Prize winner is… Okwiri Oduor!

A big congratulations to Kenya’s Okwiri Oduor for winning the 2014 Caine Prize for African Writing!!

Okwiri Oduor is the 15th winner of the Caine Prize, which is recognized as Africa’s leading literary award for short stories.

The winner was announced last night at a dinner held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England for all the shortlisted candidates.

Okwiri Oduor won the £10,000 prize for her short story, ‘My Father’s Head’. In the short story, the narrator deals with the loss of her father and tries to recollect buried memories of him. Even though the story is laden with issues of loneliness, mourning and sadness, its actually quite moving and has a courageous outlook on loss/death. Oduor is currently working on her debut novel and I can’t wait to read more of her work in the near future!

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 Read ‘My Father’s Head’ by Okwiri Oduor – here