James Currey Prize for African Literature inaugurated

*Calls for entry

TO celebrate his contribution to publishing and distributing books about Africa in Africa, a prize in honour of James Currey, the leading publisher of academic books on Africa, has been inaugurated.

Established in 2020 by writer, filmmaker and publisher of Hattus Books, Onyeka Nwelue, The James Currey Prize for African Literature is an annual award for the best unpublished work of fiction written in English by any writer, set in Africa or on Africans in Africa or in Diaspora.

The Prize is awarded by a panel of judges appointed each year by the World Arts Agency and the winner receives £1000.

James Currey, co-founder of James Currey publishers (est 1984) has been called ‘The Godfather of African Literature.’ His publishing house is responsible for producing vast numbers of academic books, journals, fiction and non-fiction books about Africa, especially in a period when it was considered not profitable to publish books about Africa. Mr Currey together with Chinua Achebe under the auspices of Heinemann publishers, produced the famous African Writers Series (AWS) which have inspired many African(ist)s around the world.

At the African Writers’ Association Conference in 2015, he was awarded the designation of ‘Noble Patron of the Arts.’

“I am most impressed by this prize,” said Currey.

According to the World Arts Agency., to qualify for entry, only full-length unpublished manuscripts of fiction written in English are eligible. Also, the authors must be living at the time of submission and the decision of the judges is final just as all submissions are confidential. Entrants are allowed to send in a maximum of two entries to the email, [email protected] by April 1, 2021.  

The organisers said all entries shall be acknowledged. And on June 1, 2021, a longlist of 10 titles will be announced while a shortlist of three titles will be announced on July 1, 2021. The winner will be announced on September 3, 2021.

While every shortlisted author will be invited to attend the Prize ceremony, the winner will be signed to the World Arts Agency, if they do not have any agent.

To chair the jury is seven-man jury is Sarah Inya Lawal, producer, talent manager and business development Manager working across theatre, film, TV and brand management for artistes. Lawal, who holds a Masters in Artistic Performance from Stockholm University, is also the founder of Ascend Talent Management. She has co-produced stage plays in Nigeria and manages the careers of talents from Africa and its diaspora.

Others are Bibi Ukonu, Dr Pinkie Mekgwe, Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph, Arun “Jay” Janakiraman, Barbara Adair and Miko Yamanouchi.

Bibi Ukonu, an architect, poet, novelist and publisher. Ukonu, who writes about Architecture and Sustainable Development, is the Editor of CityDezigns Magazine, the co-founder of Griots Lounge Publishing and Publisher of Griots Lounge Publishing Canada. He has been published in magazines such as Pyramid Magazine and Twilight Musings of the International Library of Poetry. Things That Start Small But Sweet is his second collection of short stories, and has won him the 1st Runner Up, ANA/Abubakar Gimba Prize for Short Stories.

Dr Pinkie Mekgwe is the Senior Regional Advisor for Africa and West Asia at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA). Before joining International IDEA in 2018, Mekgwe was Executive Director for Internationalisation at the University of Johannesburg. She was Deputy Director for International Education and Partnerships at the University of Botswana, and as Programme lead for Education at TrustAfrica, as well as Programme Officer for Research, Gender and the Humanities for the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). Previously, she taught courses in gender and literary studies at the universities of Sussex and Botswana. At the latter, she also led the Literary writing programme, and was adjudicator on the Bessie Head prize for literature panel. Dr Mekgwe has been a visiting researcher at the Witwatersrand Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) and at Malmo university in Sweden.

Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph hails from Nigeria. He’s the CEO & Co-Founder at Africave: a company that builds distributed teams and connects global companies to Africa’s elite software engineering talent. He was the first Nigerian recipient of the Yenching Scholarship (dubbed the Chinese Rhodes Scholarship) and studied for a master’s degree in Economics. He previously worked at Accenture and ByteDance where he built TikTok’s Africa business strategy working from the Beijing HQ. He’s been recognised by HM Queen Elizabeth II as a Queen’s Young Leader.

Arun ‘Jay’ Janakiraman has a track record of leading product management and design efforts that have impacted people globally. Some of the products he has helped build and grow include SlideShare, Scribd, LinkedIn Learning, Lynda.com, and Pinterest.

Barbara Adair is a writer with published experience in the following areas: fiction, both novels and short stories, travel articles, book reviews. She writes, and also works part time at the University of the Witwatersrand Writing Centre and in Nairobi, Kenya, consulting and assisting students in critical thinking. She previously practised as an attorney litigating on human rights issues, and thereafter taught at the Wits School of Public and Development Management. Barbara is currently registered as a PhD student at the University of Pretoria. She is the author of ‘In Tangier We Killed the Blue Parrot.’

Miko Yamanouchi is the President of Japan UNI Agency, Inc., the leading literary agency in Tokyo, representing  major US/European publishers/agencies, as well as introducing Japanese books to the world. Having placed Oyinkan Braithwaite, William Kamkwamba, Gaile Parkin, and Mazda Mengiste, JUA is seeking great literary talent in Africa.