Winning the Caine Prize for African writing has always been my dream for a long time and many Ugandan writers will tell you that this is their vision too. In 2010, Ken Barris and Alex Smith from South Africa were shortlisted from the anthology, New Writing from Africa 2009, where my short story is published. That was the closest the judges of the prize came to my writing. This year, I was one of the lucky writers to be invited to Buea in Cameroon for the Caine Prize workshop held for writers who were shortlisted in the previous year and others who were invited to participate.

The Caine Prize is named in celebration of the late Sir Michael Caine, not the American actor, but former Chairman of Booker plc, who was Chairman of the Africa 95 arts festival in Europe and Africa in 1995 and for nearly 25 years, Chairman of the Booker Prize management committee. Shortly before he died, Sir Michael Caine was working on the idea of a prize to encourage the growing recognition of the worth of African writing in English by bringing it to a wider audience. His friends and colleagues decided to carry this idea forward and establish a prize of £10,000 to be awarded annually in his memory. The Caine Prize is open to writers from anywhere in Africa for short stories published in English. However, it is the publishers who submit the work and 31 January of every year is its deadline.

The workshop consisted of 12 writers from Cameroon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Zambia and I from Uganda with two experienced mentors: Jamal Mahjoub from Sudan and Veronique Tadjo from Ivory Coast. I carried along a copy of the book so that I could get autographs from Barris and Smith. When Nick Elam, the administrator of the Caine Prize for African writing handed us, the participants, last year’s anthology, A Life in Full and other stories, I quickly made sure all last year’s shortlisted writers autographed my copies. They included: Ken Barris from South Africa, Namwali Serpell from Zambia, Alex Smith from South Africa and the winner of the Caine Prize 2010, Olufemi Terry from Sierra Leone. For the first time in the Caine prize history, Zambia and Sierra Leone were on the shortlist last year.
According to Terry Olufemi, “Winning Caine Prize gives you the confidence to continue writing, and agents and publishers get interested in your work.”

Each participant is expected to write a short story for publication in the annual Caine Prize anthology and these stories are automatically entered for the following year’s prize. My short story, which I wrote during the workshop, Bottled Memory, will be published midyear along with the shortlisted stories for the prize. It was at first an intimidating experience to have Tadjo and Mahjoub show me where to revise and the good parts of my story but I am happy that the experience helped me to appreciate critics of my writing and to improve my work. The fact that my short story will be read by a wide audience made me work harder. “The Caine Prize anthology attracts the attention of publishers and agents in the UK and US to the work of African writers,” Nick Elam said.

“Participants have benefitted enormously from working with each other as some of them have the opportunity to meet writers from other African countries or have their work commented upon by those more experienced,” he added. The writers maintain contact with one another thereafter, exchanging texts and critical comments by e-mail and thus establish a network of aspirant writers in Africa. “The Caine prize anthology is one guaranteed medium of publication which is very good. The prize also has a following that will read my work and will either like it or hate it but at least it won’t be under my bed,” said Ayodele Morocco-Clarke, one of the workshop participants.

The African winners of the Nobel PeacePrize for Literature, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer and J M Coetzee, are Patrons of the Caine Prize, as well as Chinua Achebe, winner of the Man Booker International Prize. Ben Okri, Nigerian Winner of the Booker Prize, is a Member of the council and chaired the first panel of Caine Prize judges, in 2000.

Come early May, all eyes will be on the Caine Prize shortlisted writers. The panel of judges will be chaired by award-winning Libyan novelist Hisham Matar; Granta deputy editor, Ellah Allfrey; Georgetown University Professor of English, David Gewanter; publisher, film and travel writer, Vicky Unwin and award-winning author, Aminatta Forna. This year, 126 qualifying stories have been submitted to the judges from 17 African countries. The winning story will be announced at a dinner at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, United Kingdom on July 11, 2011.



http://www.monitor.co.ug/LifeStyle/Reviews/-/691232/1149254/-/c4ig1n/-/



Caine Prize workshop participants (left to right): Nigerian writer Olujide Adebayo-Begun; Caine Prize administrator Nick Elam; 2010 Caine Prize winner Terry Olufemi and Ayodele Morocco - Clarke from Nigeria. photo by BEATRICE LAMWAKA

[img]http://www.monitor.co.ug/image/view/-/1149256/highRes/255373/-/maxw/600/-/vp7fxn/-/review003px.jpg[/img]

They included: Ken Barris from South Africa, Namwali Serpell from Zambia, Alex Smith from South Africa and the winner of the Caine Prize 2010, Olufemi Terry from Sierra Leone

Is that even plausible?

^--- Yes o. Many people in Salone with Yoruba names. An inlaw of mine, her mother is a twin named Kehinde. Born and bred in Salone.


Nice post, btw.