Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and Shola von Reinhold are on the shortlist of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2021 announced on May 4, 2021.
The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes, awarded for literature written in the English language, are Britain’s oldest literary awards. The prizes, based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, were founded by Janet Coats Black in memory of her late husband, James Tait Black, a partner in the publishing house of A & C Black Ltd in 1919. The awards are given for Fiction and Biographies written in English and published in the previous calendar year each worth £10,000 to the winner.
Some of the previous winners have been Eimear McBride, D. H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Nadine Gordimer, John le Carré, Salman Rushdie, and Zadie Smith. Helon Habila and Saidiya Hartman made the shortlist in 2020.
The shortlists in the different categories were announced on Tuesday and there are names of interest to those in the African/Black literary community. They are;
- The First Woman (Oneworld) by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
- Lote (Jacaranda) by Shola von Reinhold
The award winners will be selected by the Professor of English Literature at Edinburgh University, assisted by PhD students. They will be announced in August at the Edinburgh International Book Festival at the University of Edinburgh’s College of Art.
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