Graywolf Press African Prize for Fiction announces the call for submissions for its third edition. Note: entries are not yet open. Mark your calendars and be ready for submission on August 1. Submissions will be open for only one month.

First awarded in 2018, the prize, which is run by US publishing house Graywolf Press, recognizes “a first novel manuscript by an African author primarily residing in Africa”—with a $12,000 advance, publication in the US  by Graywolf Press and a “dedicated effort to making the book available in major markets in African countries.”

The inaugural prize was won by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber for The House of Rust (forthcoming October 2021) while the 2019 award went to Noor Naga for If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English (forthcoming April 2022).

For its third edition, the organizers are “seeking novels that are engaged with the current moment and that approach contemporary issues with innovative prose and fresh perspectives.”

Nigerian author A. Igoni Barrett, who also judged the first and second editions of the prize, will be returning as judge for the third edition. Barrett is the author of a story collection Love Is Power, or Something Like That (Graywolf Press 2013) and a novel Blackass (Graywolf Press 2016). He is the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. He lives in Nigeria.

Graywolf Press, which was founded in 1974 and located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is an award-winning independent publisher committed to the discovery and energetic publication of contemporary American and international literature. The African authors on their list range from Nuruddin Farah, to Binyavanga Wainaina, to Tsitsi Dangaremgba.

Go here to submit.