Africa39 (55 page)

Dinaw Mengestu
was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is the award-winning author of the novels
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
,
How to Read the Air
and, most recently,
All Our Names
, published in 2014. His journalism and fiction appears in publications including
Harper’s
,
Granta
and the
New Yorker
. He has been named as one of ‘5 Under 35’ by the National Book Foundation and was amongst ‘20 Under 40’ writers to watch by the
New Yorker
. The recipient of numerous awards including the
Guardian
First Book Award and a 2012 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, he currently lives in New York City.

Nadifa Mohamed
was born in Hargeisa, Somaliland and moved to England with her family in 1986. Her first novel,
Black Mamba Boy
, was longlisted for the Orange Prize, shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, John Llewelyn Rhys award, Dylan Thomas Prize, PEN Open Book Award and won the Betty Trask Prize.
The Orchard of Lost Souls
won a Somerset Maugham Prize in 2014. Her work has been published in 16 languages. Her writing has appeared in the
Guardian
,
Granta
,
Virginia Quarterly Review
and the
Independent
. She lives in London and is currently working on her third novel.

Nthikeng Mohlele
was born in 1977 and grew up in Limpopo and Tembisa township, South Africa. A graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand, he is the author of the novels
The Scent of Bliss
and
Small Things
. Two new novels,
Rusty Bell
and
Pleasure
, will be published in October 2014 and October 2015 respectively. 

Linda Musita
 is a Kenyan writer, editor and lawyer. She is a literary agent at Lelsleigh Inc in Nairobi, and a subeditor and legal officer at the 
Star
 newspaper. Her fiction has been published on the Storymoja publishers’ blog and the 
Daily Nation
. A Storymoja Hay Festival 2012/13 fellow, she is currently working on her first novella.

Richard Ali A Mutu
writes in Lingala and is considered one of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s most promising writers. The winner of the 2009 November Mark Twain Prize, he published his first book
Le cauchemardesque de Tabu
in 2011 when he was just twenty-three, and the second, a novel written in Lingala,
Ebamba,
Kinshase Makambo
by Mabiki editions. He is the founder of the Young Writers Association of Congo (AJECO). He has also written poetry, essays, monologues and theatre performance pieces.

Sifiso Mzobe
was born in Durban, South Africa. His debut novel,
Young Blood
, was published by Kwela Books and went on to be awarded the 2011 Herman Charles Bosman Award, the 2011
Sunday Times
Fiction Prize, the 2011 South African Literary Award and the 2012 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature. He currently works as a freelance journalist and is writing his second novel.

Glaydah Namukasa
is a Ugandan midwife and writer, and is currently chairperson of the Uganda Women Writers’ Association, Femrite. Her short stories are published in anthologies in Uganda, South Africa, the UK, the US and Sweden. She is the author of one novel,
The Deadly Ambition
. Her young adult novella
Voice of a Dream
, was awarded the Macmillan Writers Prize for Africa in 2006. She is the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center fellowship and in 2008 was awarded the title of Honorary Fellow by the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa. She is currently completing her first novel.

Ondjaki
was born in Luanda, Angola. He is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the 2008 Grande Prémio de Conto Camilo Castelo Branco awarded by the Portuguese Writers’ Association and the Prémio Jabuti. His novel
Os Transparentes
was awarded the Saramago Prize in 2013. He has lived in Lisbon and New York and is currently at work on various cinema and film projects and now lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Okwiri Oduor
was born in Nairobi. She is a 2014 MacDowell Colony fellow. She is currently at work on her debut novel. Her story, ‘
My Father’s Hea
d
’, won the Short Story Day Africa
Feast, Famine and Potluck
story contest, and also won the 2014 Caine Prize for African Writing.

Ukamaka Olisakwe
was raised in Kano State, Nigeria. Her debut novel,
Eyes of a Goddess
, was published in 2012 by Piraeus Books LLC, Massachusetts. Her stories have appeared in various online journals and blogs including
Saraba
,
Sentinel Nigeria
, Short Story Day Africa and Naija Stories and her essays have been published in the
Nigerian Telegraph
and
African Hadithi
. Her screenplay, a movie series, has been accepted for production by an award-winning production stable and is set for release on major TV stations throughout Africa in 2015. She
works as a customer service representative for a Nigerian Bank and is currently completing her second novel.

Chibundu Onuzo
was born in Lagos, Nigeria. The youngest ever author to be signed by Faber and Faber publishers, her debut novel,
The Spider King’s Daughter
, was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Commonwealth Book Prize and won a Betty Trask Award. She writes comment pieces for the
Guardian
, with a special interest in Nigeria. She lives in London and is currently completing a PhD on the West African Student’s Union. Her new novel,
The Wayfarer’s Daughter
, will be published by Faber and Faber in 2016.

Nii Ayikwei Parkes
was born in the UK and raised in Ghana. He is a writer, editor, broadcaster and performance poet. His debut novel,
Tail of the Blue Bird
, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and translated into Dutch, German, French and Japanese. He is the author of poetry collections including the Michael Marks Award shortlisted pamphlet
ballast: a remix
, and
The Makings of You.
In 2007 he was awarded Ghana’s national ACRAG award for poetry and literary advocacy. He is the publisher at flipped eye publishing, one of the most respected small presses in the UK, and curator of the African Writers’ Evening reading series.

Mohamed Yunus Rafiq
is a Tanzanian writer and independent documentary film maker. Prior to his career in film and creative writing, he worked for five years as Baobab Connection country co-coordinator where he published monthly articles on globalisation and youth issues. He is the co-author of a poetry collection,
Landscapes of the Heart
, a member of the internationally acclaimed hip-hop group X Plastaz Collective based in Tanzania and the co-founder of Aang Serian Peace Village, a youth-led cultural preservation organisation.

Taiye Selasi
is a writer and photographer born in London of Ghanaian and Nigerian parentage. Raised in Massachusetts, she now lives in Rome, Italy. Her debut novel,
Ghana Must Go
, was published to international acclaim in over sixteen countries and was selected as one of the ten best books of 2013 by the 
Wall Street Journal
 and the
Economist
. In 2013 she was named one of
Granta
’s Best of Young British novelists. She is currently writing her second novel.

Namwali Serpell
was born in Lusaka, Zambia. She is an associate professor in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of a book of literary criticism,
Seven Modes of Uncertainty
, published by Harvard University Press. Her fiction has appeared in publications including
Callaloo
,
Tin House
and
The Best American Short Stories
2009
. She was shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize for African writing for her first published story, ‘Muzungu’, and is a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award recipient.

Lola Shoneyin
is the author of three volumes of poetry and two children’s books.
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives
, her debut novel, was longlisted for the Orange Prize and won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and the Ken Saro-Wiwa Prose Prize. Her work has appeared in publications including the
Iowa Review
,
Chimurenga
,
Poetry International
and
Orbis
. She founded the Book Buzz Foundation in 2012 and is the director of the Aké Arts and Book festival. She lives in Lagos and is currently at work on a collection of poems and her second novel.

Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
was born in 1998 in Zimbabwe. Her short fiction has appeared in publications which include
A Life in Full and Other Stories
and
Where to Now, Short Stories from Zimbabwe
. She was awarded the 2009 Yvonne Vera Award for her short story ‘You in Paradise’ and was shortlisted for the 2012 Zimbabwe Achievers Literature Award for her short story ‘Doctor S’.
Shadows
, her debut collection of a novella and short stories, was published by Kwela Books in South Africa in 2013 and was awarded the 2014 Herman Charles Bosman Prize. She was a judge for the 2013 Short Story Day Africa
Feast, Famine and Potluck
contest. Novuyo holds a Bcom in Economics and Finance from the University of Witwaterstrand, and is currently attending the renowned MFA Creative Writing Program at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where her writing has been recognized with several fellowships.

Chika Unigwe
was born in Enugu, Nigeria. She is the author of the novels
On Black Sisters’ Street
and 
Night Dancer
. A winner of the BBC Short Story Competition and a Commonwealth Short Story Award, she was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2004. She won the Nigeria Literature Award (for fiction) in 2012 and her work has been published extensively in journals and papers around the world including the
New York Times
and the UK
Guardian.
She currently lives in the United States where she is at work on a new novel.

Zukiswa Wanner
is the author of novels
The Madams
(2006), shortlisted for the K. Sello Duiker Prize;
Behind Every Successful Man
(2008);
Men of the South
(2010), Commonwealth Best Book Africa Region; and
London Cape Town Joburg
(2014). Wanner is also the author of non-fiction satire
Maid in SA: 30 Ways to Leave Your Madam
(2013); the children’s book (an African retelling of Rapunzel)
Refilew
(2014); and co-author with Alf Kumalo of the Mandela home biography 8115:
A Prisoner’s Home
(2010). Wanner is Zambian-born to a South-African father and a Zimbabwean mother, and live in Kenya.

Mary Watson
is a South African writer. She published her debut story collection,
Moss
, in 2004 and was the 2006 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story ‘Jungfrau’. She is the author of the literary thriller
The Cutting Room
and a contributor to several anthologies. Her work has been translated into languages including Arabic, Italian, German and Dutch. She currently lives in Galway, Ireland.

Notes on the Translators

Lucy Greaves
translates from Portuguese, Spanish and French. The winner of the 2013 Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize, she was one of the Free Word Centre’s two Translators in Residence during 2014. Her translations of Eliane Brum’s
 One, Two
 and Mamen Sánchez’s
Happiness is a Cup of Tea with You 
are forthcoming in late 2014 and early 2015 respectively. Her work has been published by 
Granta
 and Words Without Borders, among others.

Jethro Soutar
is a translator of Spanish and Portuguese. He has a particular interest in Ibero-African literature and his translation of the Equatorial Guinean novel 
By Night the Mountain Burns
, by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, is published by And Other Stories. Soutar recently co-edited and co-translated 
The Football Crónicas
 for Ragpicker Press.