Fatin Abbas. Photo credit: The Reader Berlin.

Sudan’s Fatin Abbas, winner of a 2015 Miles Morland Scholarship, is one of four writers to receive a 2018 Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award. The Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award “gives its recipients full or partial funding to attend the next Retreat, which will take place April 11 to 15, 2018 in Reykjavik.” The winners are “chosen based on both merit and financial need, and submissions were reviewed by IWR alumni volunteers.” The 2018 Award received “over 700 applications from around the world and the quality of submissions was extremely high.”

The award announces its winners and shortlisters simultaneously. The winners are in categories of full and partial scholarships. Fatin Abbas, who is working on her debut novel The Interventionists, received a partial scholarship alongside the American writer Julia Duin; the full scholarships were given to India’s Puja Changoiwala and Ireland’s Nora Shychuk.

Efemia Chela. Photo credit: Short Story Day Africa.

Shortlisted for the award is Zambian-Ghanaian Efemia Chela, co-founder of Short Story Day Africa and, then 22, the youngest to be shortlisted for the Caine Prize, in 2014, for her short story “Chicken.” We have published and featured Chela’s work.

Shortlisted also are two Nigerians: Michael Agugom, recently longlisted for the 2017 Short Story Day Africa Prize, and Suyi Okungbowa; and two South Africans: Christy Chilimigras and Carien Smith.

Congratulations to Fatin Abbas, and to Efemia Chela, Michael Agugom, Suyi Okungbowa, Christy Chilimigras, and Carien Smith.

Read the full announcement HERE.