Two African writers have been named among the 2026 Cabell First Novelist Award top 10 shortlist, which highlights standout novels selected this year by students in the Virginia Commonwealth University MFA in Creative Writing program.
Representing Africa on the shortlist are:
- Olufunke Grace Bankole – The Edge of Water (Tin House):
Olufunke Grace Bankole is a Nigerian American writer. A graduate of Harvard Law School and a recipient of a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, her work has appeared in various literary journals, including Ploughshares, Glimmer Train Stories, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, The Antioch Review, and Stand Magazine. She won the first-place prize in the Glimmer Train Short-Story Award for New Writers and was the Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has been awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, and a residency fellowship from the Anderson Center at Tower View. She has also received a Pushcart Special Mention for her writing.
- Stephanie Wambugu – Lonely Crowds (Little, Brown & Company):
Born in Mombasa, Kenya, Stephanie Wambugu is the author of the novel Lonely Crowds. Her work has appeared and is forthcoming in Granta Magazine, The Drift, The Nation, Bookforum, and elsewhere.
Established in 2001 by playwright Laura Browder and novelist Tom De Haven, with early support from VCU alumnus David Baldacci, The Cabell First Novelist Award recognises outstanding debut novelists who have successfully published their first book. Now administered through Virginia Commonwealth University in partnership with VCU Libraries, the Department of English, and other sponsors, the award is named after Richmond writer James Branch Cabell, a pioneering fantasy author.
Congratulations, Olufunke Grace Bankole and Stephanie Wambugu!
