The Literary Laddership for Emerging African Authors (LLEAA) is pleased to announce its selections for the 2024 fellowship:
• Habiba Dokubo-Asari from Port Harcourt, Nigeria
• Chimezie Chika from Onitsha, Nigeria
The LLEAA reported that in this round, they received 29 applications from writers in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda. Their hand-selected, trusted reader-judges spent a month reviewing these applications (anonymously, with all identifying information redacted from reading packets), with a focus on storytelling, language and structure, style/approach/themes, and genre.
While they received many impressive, interesting and exciting submissions from clearly talented applicants, they could only award the fellowship to two candidates, and the two fellows selected above have demonstrated a penchant for high quality prose, unique storytelling approaches, a strong commitment to the writing practice and the promise of similarly impressive work in the future.
About the winners:
H.B. Asari is a Niger Deltan writer. She is the winner of the 2024 Stephen A. Dibiase Poetry Prize and has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Stories Prize 2023 and the Climate Change Poetry Prize 2022. Her work has appeared in FIYAH, Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine among others.
Chimezie Chika is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. His works have appeared in or forthcoming from, amongst other places, The Shallow Tales Review, The Republic, Terrain.org, Lolwe, Iskanchi Mag, Isele Magazine, Efiko Magazine, and Afrocritik. A Runner-Up for the J.F. Powers Prize for Fiction (2024), he was a 2021 Fellow of the Ebedi International Writers’ Residency in Iseyin, Nigeria. He is presently the Fiction Editor of Ngiga Review and currently resides in Nigeria.
For three months (starting in June 2024), these fellows will receive $500 to buy time, space and/or resources to create new work or complete their existing one. They will be given access to a private community of practice (that includes emerging and veteran authors sharing craft lessons, best practices, insider publishing knowledge, among other things). Upon completion of their work, fellows will be provided with the necessary guidance and education (and resources, where possible) to navigate the publishing industry and aid submission and publication of their work.
To read more on the prestigious Fellowship visit their website on www.suyidavies.com
Congratulations to Habiba and Chimezie on their achievement!
Bongiwe T. Maphosa
Bongiwe Maphosa is a budding author with a passion for storytelling. With her thought-provoking narratives, she takes her readers on a literary adventure. Bongiwe's works on the human condition from a fresh perspective have earned her recognition and publications in the Avbob Poetry Anthology of 2019, The Writer's Club of South Africa 2021, and JAY Lit in 2021. She hopes to cement her place in the literary community.
