Meet the Judges

Jarred Thompson

JARRED was the winner of the 2020 Afritondo Prize and has been the recipient of several prestigious scholarships, including The Global Excellence and Stature Scholarship, The Chris van Wyk Creative Writing Scholarship, two National Arts Council Grants and an NRF nGAP Scholarship.

He is a literary and cultural studies researcher and educator and works as a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Pretoria. His debut novel, Institute for Creative Dying, was published in 2023.

Desta haile

Desta Haile is a multilingual British-Eritrean writer, educator, and consultant with a background in intercultural communication, social justice and the performing arts. In 2020 Desta won To Speak Europe in Different Languages at Babel Festival of Literature and Translation, a writing competition organised by Asmara-Addis Literary Festival (In Exile), Specimen Press and The European Cultural Foundation. In 2021, she received the Afritondo Short Story Prize. Her piece, The Headhunter, was longlisted for Afritondo 2023 and included in the anthology. She holds an MA in Black British Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Howard meh-buh maximus

Howard is a Cameroonian writer and scientist. He was awarded the 2022 Afritondo Short Story Prize for his story, Grotto. He is also a winner of the Miles Morland Scholarship 2020, Kalahari Short Story Prize (2), and a semi-finalist for the Alpines Fellowship 2019. He is an awardee of the W. Morgan and Lou Claire Rose Fellowship, currently studying for an MFA in Fiction. His work has appeared in anthologies as well as literary magazines.