The winners of the 2024 Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Awards are out! The award ceremony was held on March 14, and the 21 South African winners were celebrated at the ceremony.
The National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) ensures the excellence, integrity and dynamism of the Humanities and Social Sciences, through enhancing and coordinating scholarship, research, and ethical practice in the fields of the humanities and social sciences.
Hosted by the NHISS, the 9th installment of the HSS Awards sought to honor outstanding, innovative and socially responsive scholarship, creative and digital contributions that enhance and advance the Humanities and Social Sciences.
A panel of 26 judges picked the winners. A total of 217 entries were submitted – 63 fiction entries, 82 nonfiction entries, 55 creative contributions, and 17 entries in the digital humanities. A number of established writers were seen moving into new genres – poets trying their hand at prose fiction or experimenting with a blend of genres.
Judge Ms Sukoluhle Nyathi observed genres such as magical realism and speculative fiction taking shape in the South African literary scene. Similarly, Prof Sikhumbuzo Mngadi discovered engagement with familiar themes such as “the alienation of the individual in a changing society, the tensions between traditional and contemporary ways of life, meditations on mortality, and self-reflective reconstructions of the apartheid past.”
Out of the 21 winners, the selected literary texts and their authors are:
Best Non-Fiction Edited Volume
Revisiting Sol Plaatje’s Mafeking Diary: Reconsideration and Restoration by Sebato Mpho-Mokae and Brian Willan
Best Non-Fiction Monograph
Joint winners:
Durban’s Casbah: Bunny Chows, Bolsheviks and Bioscopes by Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed
Guerillas and Combative Mothers: Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa by Siphokazai Magadla
Best Non-Fiction Biography
Joint winners:
Written Out: The Silencing of Regina Twala by Joel Cabrita
Eto La Mofaladi by Moses Seletisha
Best Fiction Novel
The Ghost of Sam Webster by Craig Higginson
Best Fiction Poetry
Ontaard by Pieter Odendaal
Best Fiction Short Stories
What Remains by Dawn Garisch
Best Fiction Edited Volume
Fluid: The Freedom to Be by Joanne Hichens and Karina M Szczurek
Best Fiction Emerging Winners
Joint winners:
Peaches and Smeets by Ashti Juggath
Everyone Dies by Frankie Murrey
Congrats to all the winners!
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