Young African Professionals Event 02/25/11
A Conversation with Emerging Leaders in African Literature.
The event featured three emerging young African writers namely:
Olufemi Terry won the 2010 Caine Prize for African Writing for his short story Stickfighting Days.
Born in Sierra Leone to a Sierra Leonean father and an Antillean mother, Terry grew up in Nigeria, the UK and Cote d'Ivoire, studied at the New York University (earning a B.A. in Political Science in 1994 and a Masters degree in Interactive Telecommunications in 2002) and has lived in Kenya, Somalia and Uganda, working as a journalist and editor with The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the World Health Organisation, and the World Bank. In 2008 he earned an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. He now lives in Cape Town and is completing work on his first novel.
With this win, Terry joins a distinguished list of Caine laureates, including Nigerians EC Osondu (2009), Segun Afolabi (2005), Helon Habila (2001), Kenyan Binyavanga Wainaina (2001) and Ugandan Monica arac de Nyeko (2007). Apart from the cash prize, the win also comes with a month-long writing residency at Georgetown University.
The Caine Prize, established in 2000, celebrates short stories of between 3,000 and 10,000 words by African writers, and is one of the continent's most prestigious literary awards. Its patrons are the three African winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, as well as Chinua Achebe.
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond has written for The Village Voice, Metro, Trace Magazine, Parenting Magazine, AOL, Nike, L'Oreal & Bluefly. Her short story "'Bush Girl" was published in African Writing and the anthology Woman's Work; her poem "The Whinings of Seven Sister Cum Laude College Graduate Working Bored As An Assistant" is included in the anthology Growing Up Girl. Brew-Hammond, a graduate of Vassar College, drew from her experience at Mfantsiman Girls' Secondary School in Ghana to write her debut novel Powder Necklace. Find her on Facebook.com/PowderNecklace and www.nanaekua.com.
Helon Habila was born in Nigeria in 1967. He studied literature at the University of Jos and taught at the Federal Polytechnic Bauchi, before moving to Lagos to work as a journalist.
In Lagos he wrote his first novel, Waiting for an Angel, which won the Caine Prize in 2001. Waiting for an Angel has been translated into many languages including Dutch, Italian, Swedish, and French.
In 2002 he moved to England to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. After his fellowship he enrolled for a PhD in Creative Writing. His writing has won many prizes including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2003. In 2005-2006 he was the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College in New York. He is a contributing editor to the Virginia Quarterly Review, and in 2006 he co-edited the British Council's anthology, New Writing 14. His second novel, Measuring Time, was published in February, 2007. He currently teaches Creative Writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives with his wife and children.
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