Pemi Aguda and Stephen Buoro are on the shortlist for the Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award 2020 announced on May 1, 2020.
Deborah Rogers (1938-2014) was a literary agent renowned for her taste, her loyalty and her immense generosity in the support she gave to authors. The UK agent’s particular genius lay in identifying and supporting talented young people considered one of the most influential of her generation. The Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award was set up to support an unpublished writer to enable them to complete their first book in 2016. Previous winners have been Deepa Anappara (2018) and Sharlene Teo (2016).
The shortlist for the 2020 award unveiled by judges Ian Rankin OBE, Sarah Perry, and Max Porter is;
- Pemi Aguda, The Suicide Mothers.
- Bhattacharya-Woodward, Zolo And Other Stories.
- Stephen Buoro, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa.
Pemi Aguda will be remembered as a winner of the Writivism Short Story Award in 2015 and a recipient of a Stellenbosch residency afterwards. Stephen Buoro is a recipient of the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship in 2018. He was awarded a University of East Anglia Humanities Studentship to study for a PhD in Creative Writing in 2019.
The winner will be announced on Tuesday 12th May. In place of the Award ceremony that was planned in London, the announcement will be made online at www.deborahrogersfoundation.org and on social media. The winner will then receive a prize of £10,000 and the two runners-up will receive £1,000 each.
Image credits for this story: Pemi Aguda by Victor Ehikhamenor, Stephen Buoro by Troy Onyango.
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