Nigerian-British writer Irenosen Okojie Wins £10,000 AKO Caine Writing Prize

Nigerian-British Writer Irenosen Okojie Wins £10,000 AKO Caine Writing Prize

Irenosen Okojie, a Nigerian-British author has been announced as the winner of the 2020 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story titled titled – Grace Jones.

T AKO Caine   is a registered charity whose aim is to bring African writing to a wider audience using our annual literary award. The prize is awarded to an African writer of a short story published in English. The prize was launched in 2000 to encourage and highlight the richness and diversity of African writing by bringing it to a wider audience internationally. The focus on the short story reflects the contemporary development of the African story-telling tradition.

The short story – Grace Jones, follows Sidra, a young Martinican woman living in London who lost her whole family in a fire that destroys their flat. In later life, she finds a sense of release working as an impersonator by the name Grace Jones.

“What I want people to take away from it is not just the pain of tragedy, it’s how we reconfigure ourselves past it,” Okojie said.

“I write weird experimental fiction. And I think it is really important to centre experimental fiction by a black woman like myself, because for a long time, I felt like I was operating on the fringes. People were often quite surprised by my writing, just in terms of subject matter and style,” she said. “When we talk about what’s an African story, stories like mine show it’s really diverse and varied.”

The chairman of the judging panel, director of The Africa Centre, Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp, said: “This year’s winner of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing is a radical story that plays with logic, time and place; it defies convention, as it unfolds a narrative that is multi-layered and multi-dimensional. It is risky, dazzling, imaginative and bold; it is intense and full of stunning prose; it is also a story that reflects African consciousness in the way it so seamlessly shifts dimensions, and it is a story that demonstrates extraordinary imagination. Most of all, it is world-class fiction from an African writer.”

Irenosen Okojie was shortlisted alongside four others Erica Sugo Anyadike(Tanzanian), Jowhor Ile(Nigeria), Rémy Ngamije(Namibian), Chikodili Emelumadu( Nigeria).

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Irenosen Okojie’s work has previously been shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Awards (2015), the Caine Prize for African Literature (2017). In 2019, she won the inaugural Curtis Brown First Novel prize for her novel ‘Dazzling’ and a Nommo award (2020).

Irenosen Okojie is pushing boundaries and we wish her continued success.