The Kenyan writer & journalist Claire Gor and Nigerian writer & editor Kelechi Njoku have been named recipients of the 2022 Rajat Neogy Editorial Fellowship.

The fellowship, which is administered by literary magazine A Long House, is named in honor of the late founding editor of Transition Magazine and seeks to spotlight and develop editorial potential on the continent. Each fellows receives editorial training and support, as well as a cash award of $1000 each.

According to a press statement, the inaugural edition received numerous applications from all over the continent. The two final recipients were selected for “their brilliance, deep interest in the African literary ecosystem, and imaginative strategies on how to not only make room for black writers, thinkers, artists, but also, a black audience.”

Join us to congratulate the fellows and read their bios below.

Clarie Gor is a Kenyan writer and journalist. She is currently interested in creating work that centers Black women and feminisms; that is an exploration of the various dynamics of violence and the possibilities of collective imagination and conversation. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Equipoise, the 2020 anthology of the Nairobi Writing Academy, Catapult, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Audacity, Kalahari Review and others. Her flash creative nonfiction essay, “This Song My God, I Have Wept!” won the February 2019 Igby Prize for nonfiction. All her work is archived on https://clariesramblings.com. She lives in Kenya.

Kelechi Njoku has worked with several organisations devoted to spotlighting literature in Africa—the Afritondo Short Story Prize; Purple Hibiscus Creative Writing Workshop; Dusty Manuscript Prize, Nigeria; Aké Arts and Book Festival; and Writivism Short Story Prize. He has edited three issues of Bakwa magazine, two of 14, and several other book and literary projects with independent publishers, Kachifo and Narrative Landscape Press. His writing appears in adda, Litro, This Is Africa, and Brittle Paper. In 2020, he was writer-in-residence at Black Rock, Dakar, Senegal. He lives in Nigeria.