Ethiopian Writer Makes 2019 Caine Prize Shortlist

ADDIS ABEBA – A US-Ethiopian writers, Meron Hadero, has been shortlisted for the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing.

The shortlist announced on May 20. The organizers said the competition is to feature stories that tackle “the ordinary in an extraordinary manner”.

It will also feature the celebration of the diversity of the African short-story writing tradition for the twentieth edition of the prize.

Meron’s nominated work ‘The Wall’ is published in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Issue 52, in 2018.

Stories of Addis Abeba-born writer appear in Best American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, Zyzzyva, The Iowa Review, and others.

Her writing is also in The New York Times Book Review and the anthology The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, reads her bio in the Caine Prize for African Writing organizers’ website.

She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, Ragdale, and MacDowell, and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, a JD from Yale Law School (Washington State Bar), and a BA from Princeton in history.

The five-writer shortlist includes authors from Cameroon, Kenya, and Nigeria.

The other writer in the shortlist include:

• Lesley Nneka Arimah (Nigeria) for Skinned, published in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Issue 53 (2018).

• Cherrie Kandie (Kenya) for Sew My Mouth, published in ID Identity: New Short Fiction From Africa (2018).

• Ngwah-Mbo Nana Nkweti (Cameroon) for It Takes A Village Some Say, published in The Baffler (2017).

• Tochukwu Emmanuel Okafor (Nigeria) for All Our Lives, published in ID Identity: New Short Fiction From Africa (2018).

According to the organizers, there will be a cash prize of £10,000 for the winning author and a travel award for each of the short-listed candidates.

The shortlisted candidates will also receive a prize of £500 and the winner will be invited to go to three literature festivals in Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria.

The shortlisted stories will be printed by the New Internationalist in its special publication to mark the twentieth Caine Prize award dinner.