No woman on shortlist as Agema, Oriogun, Dzukogi compete for NPL’s $100,000

Many who had banked on Iquo DianaAbasi’s Coming Undone As Stitches Tighten to make the shortlist of the Nigeria Prize for Literature would be disappointed as no female writer made the final list in 2022.

In the list announced by the Prize’s Advisory Board on Friday, August 26, 2022, Memory and the Call of Water by Su’eddie Vershima Agema, Nomad by Romeo Oriogun, and Your Crib, My Qibla by Saddiq Dzukogi made the cut.

The literature prize is sponsored by Nigeria LNG Limited (NLNG) with a cash award of $100,000.

Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, the chair of the Advisory Board, announced the shortlist in a live broadcast on the Prize’s social media channels.

According to the Board, Memory and the Call of Water, is a collection that consistently uses memory to reflect on life and destiny through the metaphor of water, Nomad has a fresh language and a nostalgic engagement with the themes of exile and displacement, while Your Crib, My Qibla translates tragedy into lyrical poetry with pathos and effortless imagery.

The judges will decide on the outcome, which will be announced on October 14, 2022.

The Advisory Board also announced the appointment of Professor Susan Nalugwa Kiguli as the International Consultant for this year’s Prize.

She is a Ugandan poet and literary scholar. She is an associate professor of literature at Makerere University. Professor Kiguli has served as a judge for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (African Region, 1999), and an advisory board member for the African Writers Trust.

As a poet, her 1998 collection The African Saga won the National Book Trust of Uganda Poetry Award (1999) and made literary history in the country by selling out in less than a year. Her poetry has been featured in many journals and anthologies both nationally and internationally.

The Nigeria Prize for Literature rotates yearly among four literary genres: Prose, poetry, drama and children’s literature.