Mubanga Kalimamukwento and her mother, Rachael Hope Banda.

Zambian author Mubanga Kalimamukwento has launched the Hope Prize in honor of her late mother Rachael Hope Banda. The shortlist came out recently in early June.

A partnership between Zambian literary magazine Ubwali and Lexington-based literary magazine Shenandoah, the Hope Prize celebrates the best of Zambian prose and poetry. One winner is selected each year, receives an honorarium of $500, and is featured in the fall issue of Shenandoah.

Only work by Zambian writers published in Ubwali Literary Magazine is considered for the prize. There is no separate application process, all Zambian writers published in Ubwali Literary Magazine each calendar year are considered.

Mubanga Kalimamukwento is a Zambian attorney and writer. She is the winner of the 2024 Dru Heinz Literature Prize, the 2022 Tusculum Review Poetry Chapbook Contest (2022), the 2019 Dinaane Debut Fiction Award, and the 2019 Kalemba Short Story Prize. This fall, Kalimamukwento is joining the department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) as a PhD student in Feminist Studies. Her debut collection of stories Obligations to the Wounded, is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Check out the shortlist below:

  • Mutinta Nanchengwa, for “How it Should Be” (Prose)
  • Mukandi Siame, for “Like Mother” (Prose)
  • Anna Zgambo, for “3 Poems” (Poetry)
  • Gerry Sikazwe, for “5 Poems” (Poetry)
  • Emily Pensulo, for “The Mofwe Tree” (Prose)

This finalists were selected by Ubwali Literary Magazine‘s prose and poetry editorial team: Mbozi Haimbe, Fiske Serah Nyirongo, and Akal Mohan. The founder, Mubanga Kalimamukwento, will select the winner.

Congrats to the shortlisted writers! The winner will be announced in July.