Nigerian multimedia artist, photographer and writer, Victor Ehikhamenor, has been named a member of the 2021 Caine Prize Judging panel. The other judges, drawn from different literary fields including eminent journalists, broadcasters and academics with expertise and a connection to literature in Africa, are Goretti Kyomuhendo, Nick Makoha, Razia Iqbal and Georgina Godwin.
A statement on the prize’s website said five stories are selected for the shortlist by the judges, with one selected as the winner on the day of the award each year.
Ehikhamenor has been prolific in producing abstract, symbolic and politically/historically motivated works. A 2020 National Artist in Residence at the Neon Museum, Las Vegas, Nevada, Ehikhamenor is also a 2016 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellow. He has held several solo exhibitions and his works have been included in numerous group exhibitions and biennales, including: The 57th Venice Biennale as part of the Nigerian Pavilion (2017), 5th Mediations Biennale in Poznan, Poland (2016), The 12th Dak’art Biennale in Dakar, Senegal (2016), Biennale Jogja XIII, Indonesia (2015). As a writer he has published fiction and critical essays with academic journals, magazines and newspapers round the world including New York Times, Guernica Magazine, BBC, CNN Online, Washington Post, etc. Ehikhamenor is the founder of Angels and Muse, a thought laboratory dedicated to the promotion and development of contemporary African art and literature in Lagos, Nigeria.
Kyomuhendo is one of Uganda’s leading novelists. She holds an MA in creative writing from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her first novel, The First Daughter, was published in 1996, followed by Secrets No More in 1999, which won the Uganda National Literary Award for Best Novel in the same year. In 2009, she founded and is Director of the African Writers Trust, which promotes synergies and collaborative learning between African writers on the continent and in the Diaspora.
Makoha is the founder of The Obsidian Foundation. In 2017, Nick’s debut collection, Kingdom of Gravity, was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and was one of the Guardian’s best books of the year. He is a Trustee for the Arvon Foundation and the Ministry of Stories, and a member of the Malika’s Poetry Kitchen collective. nickmakoha.com
Iqbal is a BBC News Presenter on Newshour on the World Service, and the World Tonight on Radio 4, and was the BBC arts correspondent for ten years. She will be a Visiting Journalism Professor at Princeton in 2022. She was born in Uganda and lived in Nairobi until she was 8-years-old, when she moved to London.
Godwin is an independent broadcast journalist. A regular chair of literary events, worldwide, she is also Books Editor for Monocle 24 and presenter of the in-depth author interview show “Meet the Writers”. She is a frequent host of the award winning current affairs programme The Globalist and a commentator on Southern African politics. Born in Zimbabwe, and educated there and at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, London, she was a founder member of SWRadio Africa, Zimbabwe’s first independent radio station (for which she was deemed “an enemy of the state” and banned from her home country), and of the Harare International Festival of the Arts. She serves on the board of the charities English PEN & Developing Artists.
