Bellagio Publishing Network Forum
Press Release

In the year of Africa, S.A. Afolabi from Nigeria has won the sixth Caine
Prize for African Writing, Africa’s leading literary prize, for Monday
Morning from Wasafiri, issue 41, spring 2004. The Chair of the judges,
Baroness Young of Hornsey, announced the winner of the US$ 15,000 prize
at a dinner held this evening (Monday, 4 July) in the Bodleian Library
in Oxford.

“After a very stimulating discussion, which was tough due to the quality
of the shortlisted entries, the judges have decided to award the 2005
Caine Prize for African Writing to Segun Afolabi for his poignant story
Monday Morning,” said Baroness Young.

S.A. Afolabi was born in Kaduna, Nigeria and grew up in various
countries, including the Congo, Canada, East Germany and Indonesia. He
has been writing for over ten years and has had stories published in
Wasafiri, London Magazine, Edinburgh Review, Pretext and others.

A collection of short stories provisionally titled A Life Elsewhere is
due out in spring 2006 and a novel, Goodbye Lucille, will be published
in spring 2007. Both will be published by Jonathan Cape. A graduate from
University College Cardiff Afolabi has previously worked as an assistant
content producer and sub-editor for the BBC.

Also on the shortlist were:

· Doreen Baingana (Uganda), for Tropical Fish, from African American
Review, volume 37, number 4, 2003

· Jamal Mahjoub (Sudan), for The Obituary Tango, from Wasafiri, issue
42, summer 2004

· Muthal Naidoo (South Africa), for Jail Birds, from Botsotso, Botsotso
Publishing, 2004

· Ike Okonta (Nigeria), for Tindi in the Land of the Dead, from
Humanitas, George Bell Institute, Queen’s College, Birmingham, volume 2,
number 1, October 2000

Last year’s Prize was awarded to Brian Chikwava from Zimbabwe for
Seventh Street Alchemy from Writing Still, Weaver Press, Harare 2003.
Brian is now busy writing his first novel, which he hopes to complete
before the end of the year. He has been awarded a Charles Pick
Fellowship in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Brian
is also an accomplished musician and his CD, Jacaranda Sketches, has
just been released.

Baroness Young, this year’s Chair of the judges, is board member of the
South Bank Centre and Chair of the arts advisory committee of the
British Council. She is a former academic whose publications include
Fear of the Dark: ‘Race’, Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema
(Routledge). The other judges on this year’s panel are Victoria Arana,
Professor of English at Howard University in the US, who specialises in
third world literature; Aminatta Forna, broadcaster, journalist and
author of The Devil that Danced on the Water; Romesh Gunesekera, born in
Sri Lanka and author of Reef, which was short-listed as a finalist for
the Booker Prize in 1994, and Heaven’s Edge (2002); and Dr Nana
Wilson-Tagoe, Senior Lecturer in African Literatures at the School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, who was also
a judge last year.
-Ends-

Notes for Editors:

The Caine Prize, awarded annually for African creative writing, is named
after the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of Booker plc and
Chairman of the Booker Prize management committee for nearly 25 years.
The Prize is awarded for a short story by an African writer, published
in English (whether in Africa or elsewhere), with an indicative length
of 3,000 to 15,000 words. An “African writer” will normally be taken to
mean someone who was born in Africa, or who is a national of an African
country, or whose parents are African, and whose work has reflected that
cultural background.

The four African winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Wole
Soyinka, Naguib Mahfouz, Nadine Gordimer and J M Coetzee, are Patrons of
The Caine Prize. Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne is President of the
Council and Jonathan Taylor is the Chairman.

For further information, photos or to arrange an interview with S.A.
Afolabi, please contact:

Pernille GoodallRaitt Orr & Associates Ltd Tel: 020 7222 5479Mob:
07932 018199Fax: 020 7222 5480E-mail: [email protected] Nick Elam
The Caine Prize for African Writing Tel: 020 7376 0440Fax: 020 7938
3728E-mail: [email protected]: www.caineprize.com

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