K & L Prize 2020 longlist announced.

The longlist for the K & L Prize 2020 was announced on May 8, 2020.

The K & L Prize, founded and sponsored by New Zealand-based Nigerian writer Myles Ojabo in 2018, awards $1000 (New Zealand) to the best piece of unpublished fiction. It was named after the kids of its founder Kyle and Leona. The inaugural edition was awarded to South African Sisca Julius, for her story, Honey Bee.

The prize made a call out for the best writing from the continent around the theme, Africanfuturism for its 2020 edition. Africanfuturism, coined by Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor, often depicts aliens, and sometimes witches, and is mostly set in a recognizable future Africa, with African lineages — which “are not cultural hybrids but rooted in the history and traditions of the continent” with no element or traits drawn from Western culture (or even pop culture).

Judging the texts of those who have entered the prize were to be Dione Joseph and the University of Winnipeg assistant professor Arthur Chigbo Anyaduba. These judges announced the longlist for the prize and they are;

• Shanice Ndlovu, A Water Heart.
• Olamide Olanrewaju, Blueland.
• Audrey Obuobisa-Darko, Araba.
• Kanyinsola Olorunnisola, Abija, the Architect of Mayhem.
• Augusta Oleforo, Big Fish.
• Chinwe Marycynthia Okafor, The Chronicle of Anaoma.
• Abdulrahim Hussani, The Coloured Country.
• Glennise Ayuk, Curse’ Redemption.
• Izuchukwu Udokwu, The New Colours.
• Yvonne Nezianya, The Wonders of Spirits.

Arthur Chigbo Anyaduba, speaking to Praxis Magazine said of the longlist, “the stories are a piece of imaginative wonder: remarkable depth of imagination, mellifluous narrative, the stories stay with you long after you move on with your life.” The professor further indicated that the stories pushed the limits of the imagination and expanded the horizon for speculating the past, the present and most especially the future.

The shortlist will be announced in June and the winner revealed in July 2020. All those who have made the longlist will be featured in the upcoming anthology Black Skin, No Mask to be launched later.