Call for The Caine Prize for African Writing 2024 is open now!!!
The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing is a registered charity whose aim is to bring African writing to a wider audience using their annual literary award. In addition to administering the Prize, they work to connect readers with African writers through a series of public events, as well as helping emerging writers in Africa to enter the world of mainstream publishing through the annual Caine Prize writers’ workshop which takes place in a different African country each year.
The stories written at Caine Prize workshops are published annually alongside the Prize’s shortlisted stories in the annual Caine Prize Anthology by Cassava Republic Press in the UK and publishers African countries including, Jacana Media (South Africa), Cassava Republic (Nigeria), FEMRITE (Uganda), Gadsen Publishers (Zambia), ‘amaBooks (Zimbabwe), Langaa (Cameroon), and Mkuku na Nyota (Tanzania).
It is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, 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. After his death, friends and colleagues decided to establish a prize of £10,000 to be awarded annually in his memory.
Senegalese entrants Mame Bougouma Diene and Woppa Diallo have been jointly awarded the 2023 Caine Prize for African Writing for their short story ‘A Soul of Small Places’, published in TorDotCom (2022). This is the first time a husband and wife writing duo have won since the Prize’s inception in 2000.
The Chair of the Caine Prize Judging Panel, Professor of Law at SOAS, University of London, Fareda Banda, announced the winner of the £10,000 prize at an award ceremony held at One Birdcage Walk in London on Monday 2 October 2023.
Location:
OnlineBenefits
- Prize Money: £10,000
- The winner and shortlisted writers will be invited to participate in events in Africa, London and elsewhere should resources and circumstances permit. In these cases, there will be travel award granted to each of the shortlisted candidates.
- By consenting to their stories being submitted for the Prize, the shortlisted writers agree to take part in Prize related events, including but not limited to in-person and online panel discussions, interviews, readings, podcast recordings and the final award ceremony.
- The Prize will provide a separate letter detailing terms of agreement to the shortlisted writers.
Eligibilities
- The story must have been published in the five years preceding the submissions deadline. For 2024 eligibility, the judges will only consider work published between 1st April 2019 and 25th March 2024.
- Entries must be more than 3,000 words or less than 10,000 words.
- Entries must be submitted by a publisher. This includes publishers of physical and digital books, literary journals, magazines, and arts oriented websites.
- Writers must be over 18 years of age at the time of submission.
- Self-published and unpublished short stories are not eligible.
- Publishers are encouraged to submit multiple short stories as long as they do not submit more than one story by the same author.
- Stories may only be entered for consideration for The Caine Prize for African Writing once. Unfortunately, this means that the applicant may not re-submit a story for consideration, even if it was not selected for the shortlist.
- Genres not eligible for entry include: novels, children’s stories, factual writing, academic essays, plays, poetry, autobiography/biography, and any work that does not constitute a fictional short story.
- Submissions must specify which African country the author comes from and the short story word count.
- Publishers are required to upload a ‘publisher’s letter’ with each submission. See below for more information:
- What should the publisher’s letter include?
Publishers are required to provide:- Name of the writer(s).
- Title of the story or stories being submitted.
- Word count of each submitted story.
- The qualifying nationality of the writer(s).
- The date of publication of the story or stories.
- Confirmation of consent from the writer(s) whose stories are being submitted for the Prize.
- What should the publisher’s letter include?
- Each story must be submitted by the publisher via email ([email protected]) as a PDF attachment or via a link to the story (if it has been published online).
- Please ensure ‘The Caine Prize for African Writing Entry for 2024’ appears in the subject matter of the applicant’s email.
- Only fictional short stories are eligible for the Prize.
- Works not eligible for entry include: children’s stories, factual writing, academnic essays, plays, poetry and autobiography/biography.
- Only an African writer is eligible to apply for this prize. An ‘African writer’ is taken to mean someone who is a national of an African country, or who has a parent who is African by birth or nationality.
Application Process
- Each story must be submitted by the publisher via email ([email protected]) as a PDF attachment or via a link to the story (if it has been published online)
- Publishers are required to upload a ‘publisher’s letter’ with each submission
- Please ensure ‘The Caine Prize for African Writing Entry for 2024’ appears in the subject matter of the applicant’s email.
Application Deadline: March 31, 2024
Application ClosedOfficial link
