The K & L prize has announced its 2020 longlist.

Currently in its second year, the $1000 NZ prize was founded and sponsored by New Zealand-based Nigerian writer Myles Ojabo and is awarded to the best piece of unpublished fiction by an African.

The 2020 prize is based on the theme of ‘Africanfuturism’ and is judged by the academic Chigbo Arthur Anyaduba and dramatist Dione Joseph.

The longlist of ten features writers from Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon, including Brittle Paper’s former contributor Kanyisola Olorunnisola.

Here is the full longlist:

  • Shanice Ndlovu, A Water Heart
  • Olamide Olanrewaju, Blueland
  • Audrey Obuobisa-Darko, Araba
  • Kanyisola Olorunnisola, Abija, the Architect of Mayhem
  • Augusta Oleforo, Big Fish
  • Chinwe Marycynthia Okafor, The Chronicle of Anaoma
  • Abdularahim Hussani, The Coloured Country
  • Glennise Ayuk, Curse’ Redemption
  • Izuchukwu Udokwu, The New Colours
  • Yvonne Nezianya, The Wonders of Spirits

Commenting on the longlist, Anyaduba said: “the stories are a piece of imaginative wonder: remarkable depth of imagination, mellifluous narrative, the stories stay with you long after you move on with your life.”

He further indicated that the stories pushed the limits of the imagination and expanded the horizon for speculating the past, the present and most especially the future.

Joseph said: “it was a pleasure to read such a variety of different and compelling stories from the youth of our great continent of Africa. The stories demonstrate an exercise in developing one’s own voice, shifting from description to dialogue and reaching into our ancestral knowledge to look into the future.”

The shortlist will be released by June 2020, and the winner announced in July. An anthology containing the longlisted stories, titled Black Skin, No Mask will be available this month (May) in e-book format via amazon.

Congratulations to the longlisted writers!