The Jury of the 2022 Earl Lovelace Short Fiction Prize has announced the winner.
The short fiction prize in honour of Earl Lovelace, a renowned writer from the Caribbean was established by Nigerian writer and publisher, Dr Onyeka Nwelue, an Academic Visitor at the African Studies Centre, University of Oxford.
Onyeka Nwelue in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, with Earl LovelaceChair of the Jury, Chioma Okereke, a Nigerian-born poet, author and short story writer, whose debut novel, Bitter Leaf (2010), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize – Africa Best First Book 2011, in announcing the winner, said: “I’ve now received all votes in for the competition. It clearly wasn’t an easy decision to make as the selections were quite disparate. Having said that, the winning story was the only story that had two judges pick it for first place (the rest had singular votes) and that is, The Season of Heavy Rains by Oluwabusayo Madariola.
The runner up is The Taste of Dust by Okechi Okeke.”
The winner will receive £500.
Shortlisted authors will be published in an anthology by Abibiman Publishing, which will be edited by Dr Onyeka Nwelue.
Earl Lovelace, described as the most important writer in the Caribbean, was born on 13 July 1935.
The other members of the jury are Lidudumalingani (South Africa), Tathiana Cassano (Brazil), Ikenna Okeh (Nigeria) and Javier Gutierrez Lozano (Mexico).
