Professor Tanure Ojaide and Uganda’s Harriet Arena have been announced as the joint winners of 2018 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature.
Servio Gbadamosi, a doctoral candidate in the cultural and media studies program at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, was the runner-up. He was shortlisted for his ‘A Tributary in Servitude’.
The winners were announced at a ceremony held at the Muson Center, Onikan, Lagos.
70-year-old Ojaide, a professor of Africana Studies at The University of North Carolina, was shortlisted for his poetry collection, ‘Songs of Myself’.
Professor Tanure Ojaide has published 20 poetry collections as well as scholarly and fictional works.
Ms. Anena was the first Ugandan to have won the biennial award meant for writers.
The only other time the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature has been shared was in 2010, when South Africa’s Kopano Matlwa (Coconut) and Nigeria’s Wale Okediran (Tenants of The House) emerged joint winners.
This edition of the rotating Pan-African prize is for poetry and had 110 submissions from 11 countries on the continent, including Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Rwanda.
For his extensive work in the world of literature, the Lumina Foundation established the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa in honour of the revered Nigerian writer.
Every two years, the prize, worth $10,000 is awarded to the best literary work produced by an African.
