Judges
Doreen Baingana
Doreen Baingana is a Ugandan writer whose short story collection, Tropical Fish, won the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction and a Commonwealth Prize. Her stories have been shortlisted for the Caine Prize three times, and her other awards include a Miles Morland Scholarship; a Rockefeller Bellagio Residency; a Sustainable Arts Foundation grant; a Tebere Arts Foundation Playwright’s Residency, and a Gretchen J. Bryant Freedom to Write Distinguished Fellowship. She has also published two children’s books as well as stories and essays in many journals, including Agni, Callaloo, Chelsea, Glimmer Train, The Guardian, UK, Caravan: A Journal of Politics and Culture (India), Chimurenga, Kwani?, Ibua, Evergreen Review, Transition and The Georgia Review. Ms. Baingana has adapted her stories for the stage, which have been performed in Uganda and Germany. Previously a managing editor at Storymoja Africa and chairperson of FEMRITE, she has taught creative writing for two decades and is the co-founder and director of the Mawazo Africa Writing Institute, based in Entebbe.
Efemia chela
Efemia Chela is a Zambian-Ghanaian editor based in South Africa. Her first published short story, Chicken, was nominated for the Caine Prize in 2014. Her subsequent work has appeared in Short Story Day Africa, Wasafiri, PEN Passages, and New Internationalist, amongst others. She is working on her first novel.
Ayesha Harruna Attah
Ayesha Harruna Attah is a Ghanaian-born writer living in Senegal. She was educated at Mount Holyoke College, Columbia University, and New York University. She is the author of the Commonwealth Writers Prize-nominated Harmattan Rain; Saturdays Shadows; The Hundred Wells of Salaga, currently translated into four languages; The Deep Blue Between, a book for teen readers; and Zainab Takes New York, a rom-com optioned for TV/film adaptation. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Elle Italia, Asymptote and the 2010 Caine Prize Writers' Anthology. She was recently selected as the 2023-2024 Literature Protégée for the Rolex Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative.