Caine Prize for African Writing 2017 shortlist announced

The Caine Prize for African Writing 2017 shortlist announced today comprises Magogodi oaMphela Makhene, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Chikodili Emelumadu, Bushra al-Fadil, and Arinze Ifeakandu.

The Caine Prize for African writing 2017 has announced its shortlist and it contains some names that we are familiar with as well as some we are not as familiar with. Lesley Nneka Arimah has been featured here before as winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2015 in the Africa region. She was nominated for her story Who Will Greet You At Home which was published in The New. She has written a collection of short stories with the name What It Means When A Man Falls from the Sky. She was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2016.

Also shortlisted was Chikodili Emelumadu for her story Bush Baby published in African Monsters, edited by Margaret Helgadottir and Jo Thomas. Chikodili’s work has appeared in One Throne, Omenana, Apex, Eclectica, Luna Station Quarterly and the interactive fiction magazine, Sub-Q. In 2014, Chikodili was nominated for a Shirley Jackson award. Chikodili is working on her novel.

Bushra al-Fadil was shortlisted for his story The Story of the Girl whose Birds Flew Away translated by Max Shmookler with support from Najlaa Osman Eltom, published in The Book of Khartoum – A City in Short Fiction edited by Raph Cormack & Max Shmookler. Bushra has published four collections of short stories in Arabic. His most recent collection Above a City’s Sky was published in 2012, the same year Bushra won the Altayeb Salih Short Story Award. Bushra holds a PhD in Russian language and literature.

Arinze Ifeakandu was shortlisted for his story God’s Children Are Little Broken Things published in A Public Space 24 (A Public Space Literary Projects, Inc., USA. 2016). Arinze was the editor of The Muse (No. 24) at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where he studied English and literature, graduating in 2016. In 2013, Arinze attended the Farafina Trust Creative Writing workshop and was shortlisted for the BN Poetry Prize in 2015. Arinze was a 2015 Emerging Writer fellow of A Public Space magazine, where his short story was published.

Magogodi oaMphela Makhene was shortlisted for The Virus published in The Harvard Review 49 (Houghton Library Harvard University, USA. 2016). Magogodi’s work has appeared in Ploughshares and Elie Wiesel’s An Ethical Compass, and has been recognised by the NYU Reynolds Program for Social Entrepreneurship, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity and the Truman Capote Fellowship at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she earned her MFA. Magogodi is a recipient of the David Relin Prize for Fiction and is currently working on a collection of interwoven stories exploring the inner lives and loves of ordinary South Africans.