JUDGES
Karen Jennings is a South African author. Her debut novel, Finding Soutbek, was
shortlisted for the inaugural Etisalat Prize for African Fiction. In 2014 her short story
collection, Away from the Dead, was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International
short story competition. Her memoir, Travels with my Father, was published in 2016,
and in 2018 she released her debut poetry collection, Space Inhabited by Echoes.
Her historical mining novel, Upturned Earth, was published in 2019, followed in 2020
by An Island, which was published by Holland House Books and longlisted for the
2021 Booker Prize.
Reem Gaafar is a public health physician, writer, researcher, filmmaker and mother of three boys. Over the years she accumulated nearly two hundred publications including blog posts, peer-reviewed and magazine articles, short stories, policy briefs and book contributions.
Her fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in African Arguments, African Feminism, Teakisi Magazine, Andariya, 500 Words Magazine, International Health Policies and Health Systems Global.
In 2023 Reem won the Island Prize with her novel ‘A Mouth Full of Salt’, to be published worldwide by Saqi Books of London.
Sana Goyal is Wasafiri’s Editor and Publishing Director. Sana has also worked as Publicity Manager at Tilted Axis Press and Marketing and Outreach Officer at Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal.
She has a PhD in literary prizes from SOAS, University of London, and has judged prizes for the Orwell Foundation, English PEN, and is the 2024 judge of the Republic of Consciousness Prize.
Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Financial Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Poetry London, Vogue India, and elsewhere.
She tweets @SansyG
Hilda J. Twongyeirwe is a Ugandan, a mother, a writer. She is a recipient of:
a national medal of the Uganda Government for her contribution to emancipation
of women through literary arts, the Women for Women arts and culture award 2018
and the Uganda Registration Services Bureau cultural memory award 2018. She is
a fellow of the 2019 USA IVLP – themed Writing and Social Justice. She has
coordinated various writing and editorial activities with FEMRITE, Action for
Development, Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development, The African
Women’s Development Fund and Oxfam-IBIS. She has co-edited some
works including, Wondering and Wandering of Hearts, Nothing to See Here, I Dare
Say and No Time to Mourn. Hilda works with FEMRITE – Uganda Women Writers
Association and is a member of the Graca Machel Women in Media Network and a
member of the International Advisory Board of the African Research Universities
Alliance CoE in Notions of Identity.
Hamza Koudri has an MA in English Literature and Civilization and has been working in education and international development since 2008. Currently serving as the Country Director with the British Council in Algeria, he oversees a portfolio of English, STEM, higher education and cultural programmes, working closely with public sector teachers and institutions. Over the years, he has created and led courses and projects for youth and educators across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region and beyond.
During a year-long fellowship in the United States, he also helped establish a mentorship programme for a social equity course at Penn State University and a teacher training certificate program for Indiana University. He also took a creative writing course with award-winning author, Elizabeth Kadetsky, during which time he started working on Sand Roses. Research for his novel took the better part of a decade, seeking traces of a muted past between the folds of visual documentation and oral histories. In 2022, Sand Roses was shortlisted for the Island Prize for unpublished African authors.
Obinna Udenwe is a novelist and short story writer. The author of the conspiracy
crime thriller, Satans & Shaitans, and most recently the novel, Colours of Hatred –
shortlisted for the NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature 2021. Obinna is also the author
of the novella, Holy Sex and the chapbook, The Brief Story of the New Love
Software. He is the winner of the Prairie Schooner-Glenna Luschei Prize 2020 and
The Short Story is Dead Prize 2016. His works have appeared in The Temz Review,
Afreada, Munyori Literary Journal, Fiction365, Tribe Magazine, Kalahari Review, The
Shallow Tales Review and More. He is the co-founder of The Village Square Journal
and since 2015, the editor of Ebedi Review – an in-house magazine of the Ebedi
International Writers Residency. He lives in Abakaliki, Nigeria where he runs his own
farm and civil engineering firm.
ADMINISTRATION
Luthando Dlamini was born in Margate, KwaZulu-Natal. He holds a Bachelor’s
degree in law and philosophy from the University of Cape Town where he is pursuing
a postgraduate law degree. He has been published in the Sol Plaatje European
Union Poetry Anthology.
Born in Poland, Karina M. Szczurek lived in Austria, the United States and Wales,
before finding a home in South Africa. She is the author and (co)editor of a dozen
works of fiction and non-fiction, most recently a memoir, The Fifth Mrs Brink, and an anthology, Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa. She won the MML Literature Award in the Category English Drama in 2012 and received the Thomas Pringle Award for a portfolio of ad hoc reviews from the English Academy of Southern Africa in 2018. She is a board member of Short Story Day Africa and New Contrast. In
2019, she founded Karavan Press, an independent publishing house, and established the Philida Literary Award a year later. She lives in Cape Town.
Robert Peett grew up in London and, after being ejected from school studied at
University College, London and did postgraduate work at the London School of
Economics. He lived in France and Greece for a time before working in education
and then the Art world for many years. He founded Holland House Books in 2012.
Robert is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
