Awele Creative Trust has announced the longlist for the 2020 Awele Short Story Prize.

The annual prize, valued at ₦50,000, rewards a short story of up to 5,000 words by a Nigerian writer aged between 16 and 26.

According to a tweet shared by ACT, there were over 200 submissions for the prize this year. The 14 writers on the 2020 longlist touched on themes ranging from “grief to loss of friendship, the marginalization of women to SARS.”

Here is the full longlist:

  • Haneefah Mofoluwashekemi Bello for “Brown Paper Seamstress”
  • Fatima Mohammed for “Murder she Wrote”
  • Ephraim N Oji for “Horror’s Many Sounds and Faces”
  • Joshua Chizoma for “Their Boy”
  • Praise Osawaru for “Home as an Ocean Filled with Storms and Fear”
  • Tezor Dedam for “A Sacred Place”
  • Azeeza Adeowu for “No Longer Friends”
  • Dorcas Akobundu for “Kitchen Chats”
  • Inimfon Inyang for “Tabula Rasa”
  • Chibuike Ogbonnaya for “A Shattered Woman”
  • Simbiat Haroun for “Infinite”
  • Prince Briight for “Masquerade”
  • Michael Emmanuel for “Farmer’s Boy”
  • Chinaza Attamah for “Yellow Sisi”

Previous winners include Caleb Adebayo for 2014, Nneoma Ike Njoku for 2015, Caleb Somtochukwu Okereke and Anthony Ezekwoh for 2016, Imade Iyamu for 2017, and Bakporhe Ufuomaoghene for 2019.

A shortlist of 5 will be announced in March, and the winner in April. Fingers crossed for those longlisted!