Judges 2025

Rémy Ngamije

Rémy Ngamije is a Rwandan-born Namibian author, editor, publisher, photographer, literary educator, and entrepreneur. Only Stars Know The Meaning Of Space, his collection of award-winning fiction, will be published in December 2024 by Scout Press. His debut novel The Eternal Audience Of One (Scout Press) was honoured with a Special Mention at the inaugural Grand Prix Panafricain De Litterature and won the inaugural African Literary Award from the Museum of the African Diaspora. 

Rémy’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in The Johannesburg Review of Books, American Chordata, Lolwe, LitHub, Granta, and One Story, among others. He won the Africa Regional Prize of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and was shortlisted for the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing in 2021 and 2020. He was longlisted and shortlisted for the 2020 and 2021 Afritondo Short Story Prizes respectively. In 2019 he was shortlisted for Best Original Fiction by Stack Magazines.

Rémy is the founder and chairperson of Doek, an independent arts organisation in Namibia supporting the literary arts and the editor-in-chief of Doek! Literary Magazine, Namibia’s first and only literary magazine. He is also the founder and director of several literary initiatives, such as the Bank Windhoek Doek Literary Awards, the Doek Literary Festival, and the Doek Anthology. His work has been supported by the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the Miles Morland Foundation and has been featured in literary festivals in Accra, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Berlin, and Basel.

He has served as a judge of the Kalemba, Kendeka, Plaza, and Commonwealth short story prizes.

Ama Asantewa Diaka

Ama Asantewa Diaka is a storyteller and a community catalyst. She is the author of two poetry books—“You Too Will Know Me” and “Woman, Eat Me Whole”—and a short story collection—“Someone Birthed Them Broken”.

She is also the founder of Black Girls Glow, an arts nonprofit that explores ways in which art can be used to build thriving ecosystems, and Tampered Press, a literary and arts journal for Ghanaians and Africans.

UMAR turaki

Umar Turaki is the author of the literary speculative novel “Such a Beautiful Thing to Behold” (Little A, 2022), which was named a best book of the year by the Boston Globe, Brittle Paper, and Open Country Magazine. His writing has been nominated for the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship and the Short Story Day Africa Prize.

His short films have screened at festivals around the world, notably, the New York African Film Festival, the Pan African Film Festival, the Durban International Film Festival, the Zanzibar International Film Festival, and the Africa International Film Festival. His second novel, “Every Drop of Blood Is Red”, is forthcoming from Little A in November 2024.