Pemi Aguda, Masande Ntshanga, and Natasha Omokhodion-Banda were revealed to be the judges for the Afritondo Short Story Prize 2022 on September 15, 2021. The theme will be “Spirituality.”
Afritondo, a platform that aims to connect with and tell the stories of African and black minority populations across the globe, is the founder of the Afritondo Short Story Prize first hosted in 2020. Previous winners of the fast-growing prize have been Jarred Thompson and Desta Haile.
The road to the 2022 edition of the prize kicked off as the judges for the next edition were announced and the call out for submissions alongside the theme on September 15. The judges for the next edition are Pemi Aguda (Chair), Masande Ntshanga, and Natasha Omokhodion-Banda.
Pemi Aguda
’Pemi Aguda is from Lagos, Nigeria. She has an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.
Her novel manuscript won the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award, and she is a 2021 fiction fellow with the Miami Book Fair. pemiaguda.com
Masande Ntshanga
Masande Ntshanga is the author of the novels, The Reactive (2014) and Triangulum (2019), as well as the chapbook, Native Life in the Third Millennium (2020), an experimental collection of poetry and prose. He is the winner of the inaugural PEN International New Voices Award in 2013 and a Betty Trask Award in 2018. He was born in East London, South Africa, and graduated from the University of Cape Town, where he completed his Masters in Creative Writing under the Mellon Mays Foundation. He has received a Fulbright Award, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, and a Bundanon Trust Award. His work has appeared in Chimurenga, The LA Review of Books Quarterly Journal, MIT Technology Review and n+1.
Natasha Omokhodion-Banda
Natasha is a Zambian who lives in Lusaka. She is also of Nigerian and Jamaican heritage. Her short stories have been featured in various pan-African publications, including ‘Short Story Day Africa 2018’ for Door of No Return, which has been translated into Portuguese for Brazilian Journal Periferias.
Her first novel No Be From Hia was selected as a Graywolf Africa Press finalist in 2019. After initial success in Zambia, it was acquired by South African publisher Black Bird Books. In 2020, she participated in the inaugural online festival Afro Lit Sans Frontieres in which she interviewed authors such as Leila Aboulela, Ayobami Adebayo and Tsitsi Dangarembga. She is an alumna of Curtis Brown Creative’s inaugural Breakthrough Course for Black Writers.
Theme: Spirituality
For as long as we could think, humans have wondered about the world, about life, about our very essence. How are we here? More importantly, why are we here? What is it beyond what we can see that gives us a purpose?
Spirituality encompasses a vast array of concepts from internal/personal reflections to traditional/religious practices, and everything in-between. As always, we want to be surprised and thoroughly entertained, so feel free to play around and be creative with the theme. A good story for this prize will offer unique insight into the theme and explore characters in refreshing and imaginative ways.
Prizes: The winner will receive a cash prize of $1000. Four other shortlisted writers will get $100 each.
To enter this competition, please click here for more information. The deadline is December 15, 2021.
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