Celebrated Ugandan author Jennifer Makumbi is on the longlist of the 2020 Edge Hill Short Story Prize for her debut collection Manchester Happened.

The £10,000 award is annually conferred by Edge Hill University to the best short story collection by a single author born or permanently resident in the UK.

The award has a long history of female domination and 2020 is no different, with the entire longlist featuring books written by women. Previously nominated writers of African descent include Irenosen Okojie (shortlist) in 2017 for Speak Gigantular and Leila Aboulela in 2019 (longlist) for Elsewhere Home.

Previously nominated for the 2019 Big Book Awards, Makumbi’s collection has been met with enthusiasm since its release. It was published in the US as Let’s Tell This Story Properly. Read an excerpt from one of the stories in the collection here.

The 2020 prize judges include 2019 winner David Szalay, MD of Saraband Sara Hunt, and poet & academic Dr Zayneb Allak.

A shortlist will be announced in September and a winner revealed in November. Other prizes to be awarded include a £1,000 reader’s choice award given to an author from the shortlist and a £500 prize for the best short story submitted by an Edge Hill University MA Creative Writing student.

See the full longlist here.

Congratulations to Jennifer Makumbi.