The Kenyan winner of the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing, Makena Onjerika has said she will donate a tenth (£1,000) of her winnings to help rehabilitate street children in Kenya.
In her recent tweet she also said that she is hopefully working with others for the long term around children's affairs.
Speaking to
BBC on how she will expend the remaining money, Onjerika said, "With the rest of the money I'll buy a car or maybe a motorcycle to get through traffic jams in Nairobi."
On why she chose to write about street children, she said she write about them because "Kenyans - me included - do not see street kids as children.
"There are children, and then there are 'chokora'," she added, explaining the derogatory Swahili term used by Kenyans which translates as "street urchins".
Onjerika, who is the fourth Kenyan to take the prize, won for her short story “Fanta Blackcurrant,” published in Wasafiri in 2017, in which a street child in Nairobi, who makes a living from sex trade is caught stealing and is beaten by local criminals.
Her story Fanta Blackcurrant was chosen from a shortlist of five.
One of the rising Spoken Word Poetry Artists from Kwara State in Nigeria, Saliu Ahmad Toyin, popularly called Penwarlord has decided to lend a voice to the EndSARS campaign raging across Nigeria.
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| The elected 40 new Fellows under the age of 40. Photo credit-RSL website. |
Forty Fellows under the age of 40 have been elected into this year's Royal Society of Literature (RSL).
The announcement was done on Wednesday, June 28, 2018 at The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB.
The prolific Welsh literary author, poet, editor, critic, translator and obituarist, Meic Stephens died yesterday at the age of 79.
His known works included The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales (1986), Rhys Davies: A Writer's Life (2013) and Poetry 1900 - 2000 (2007).
The shortlists for the Betty Trask, McKitterick, Tom-Gallon and Somerset Maugham awards have been announced by The Society of Authors, with Nigerian writer Anietie Isong, amongst the 22 shortlisted names.
The four prizes will be awarded at The Authors’ Awards on Thursday 19th July, in London, a unique night of riches with all the awards judged by authors for authors.
The event has rewarded the early works of some of today’s most prominent literary figures such as Zadie Smith, Seamus Heaney, Helen Dunmore, Hari Kunzru, Carol Ann Duffy and Mark Haddon.
The evening will see the UK’s biggest literary fund of more than £98,000 awarded to established and emerging writers of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Anietie Isong is shortlisted for the McKitterick Prize, for his debut novel, Radio Sunrise.
Frances Fyfield, McKitterick judge says of Radio Sunrise: "A small volume, staying long in the imagination, with the huge backdrop of a young, utterly likeable Nigerian journalist trying to live a life and get ahead. Lovely, simple first-person narrative of youthful manhood, getting it wrong, getting it right, learning on the hoof. Makes the reader long to meet him, while engendering both hope and despair for the society he inhabits, all enlivened by humour."
Anietie Isong has worked as a journalist, speechwriter and public relations manager in the UK and in Nigeria. His writing has received some awards, including a Commonwealth Short Story Award.
