CAINE PRIZE JUDGES: 2014

The Caine Prize has announced the judges of the 2014 award as follows:

Jackie Kay MBE (Chair)

 

photo credit: Denise Else

Jackie Kay was born and brought up in Scotland. Her novel The Adoption Papers won the Forward Prize, a Saltire prize and a Scottish Arts Council Prize. Her most recent collection of poems, Fiere, was shortlisted for the Costa award. Jackie won the Guardian Fiction Award for her novel Trumpet, which was also shortlisted for the IMPAC award. She won the Scottish Book of the Year Award and the London Book Award for Red Dust Road, and the Decibel British Book Award for her book of stories entitled Wish I Was Here.

Jackie’s book for children, Red Cherry Red, won the Clype award and her most recent plays, Manchester Lines (produced by Manchester Library Theatre) and The New Maw Broon Monologues (produced by Glasgay) were a great success. Her most recent book, Reality Reality, is a collection of stories and she is currently working on her new novel, Bystander.

She was awarded an MBE in 2006, made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002 and is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University.

Helon Habila

Helon Habila was born in Nigeria and worked in Lagos as a journalist before moving to England in 2002 for a writing fellowship at the University of East Anglia. In 2001 his short story, “Love Poems”, won the Caine Prize and his first novel, Waiting for an Angel, was published the following year. The novel went on to win the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Novel (Africa Section) in 2003.

In 2005-2006 Helon was the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College, New York. He stayed on in America as a professor of Creative Writing at George Mason University in Virginia. Helon won the Virginia Library Foundation’s fiction award in 2008 with his novel Measuring Time and Oil on Water was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize (2011) and the Orion Book Award (2012). It was also a runner up for the PEN Open Book Award (2012).

In 2011 Helon edited The Granta Book of the African Short Story. From July 2013 to June 2014 he will be a DAAD fellow in Berlin.

Dr Nicole Rizzuto

Nicole Rizzuto is Assistant Professor of English at Georgetown University. Her areas of concentration include modernist and contemporary Anglophone literature, with a focus on narratives of Britain, Africa, and the Caribbean. Her work has appeared in such journals as Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, College Literature, Comparative Literature, and Twentieth Century Literature. She recently completed a book manuscript examining how testimonies to the historical traumas of colonialism shape twentieth-century Anglophone fiction and nonfiction.

Nicole Rizzuto received her PhD from Columbia University in English and Comparative Literature. Before joining Georgetown’s English department, she was Assistant Professor of English at Oklahoma State University.

Gillian Slovo

South African born Gillian Slovo is the author of twelve novels and a family memoir. Her novel Ice Road was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and Red Dust, which won the RFI Temoin du Monde prize, was made into a film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Hilary Swank.

Gillian is also co-author of the verbatim play, Guantanamo - Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, which was staged world wide, as well as the verbatim section for the Tricycle theatre's ‘Women, Power and Politics’ season. Her second play, The Riots, played in the Tricycle theatre and Bernie Grant Arts Centre. Gillian is also a former President of English PEN.

Percy Zvomuya

Percy Zvomuya is a Zimbabwean journalist, football fan and critic. He is a co-founder of The Con Magazine, a Johannesburg writing collective. His writing has appeared in various publications including Africasacountry.com, Mail & Guardian, The Sunday Times (South Africa) and Chimurenga. He is working on a biography of Robert Mugabe. He is a Miles Morland fellow and Wiser-Duke fellow.