UK-based Nigerian writer Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim has won the Gold Prize for Fiction in the prestigious 2024 Creative Future Writers’ Awards (CFWA), while British-Ugandan poet Francis-Xavier Mukiibi won the Silver Prize for Poetry.
Now in its eleventh year, the 2024 edition of Creative Future Writers’ Awards was themed “Reveal”, attracting a record 1,600 submissions from unpublished writers from around the UK. The themes explored in the fifteen winning entries across fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry include gender identity, betrayal, rites of passage and lived experiences of transition, cancer treatment and being in care, etc.
Ibrahim won for “Àlàdé Must Die”, a humorous short story inspired by Yoruba mythology, where a taboo-busting dare unleashes chaos in a marketplace. Francis-Xavier’s win, on the other hand, is for “Dig Up Black Boy Bones from Brown”, a meditation on art and the experiences of young black men.
Ibrahim is the editor of the Journal of African Youth Literature (JAY Lit), a winner of the Quramo Writer’s Prize and a recipient of the Jessica George Bursary. He has appeared on numerous shortlists/longlists including the Faber Children’s FAB Prize, Miles Morland Writing Scholarship, Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Moon City Short Fiction Award, Laura Kinsella Fellowship, Dzannc Diverse Voices Prize, etc. His work has been selected for the Best Small Fictions anthology, with multiple nominations for both the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net.
North Londoner Francis-Xavier Mukiibi is a poet and performer of Ugandan heritage. He is an alumnus of the Barbican Young Poets, the Roundhouse Poetry Collective and the Obsidian Foundation. He received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2024 and has performed his poetry on BBC Radio and iPlayer. His poems appear, or are forthcoming, with Ink Sweat & Tears, Zindabad Zine, Under the Radar, Propel, Magma, Poetry Wales, Poetry London, Broken Sleep Books, and Flipped Eye Publishing.
Judge of the 2024 Creative Future Writers’ Award, poet, writer and essayist, Nina Mingya Powles, says:
“Judging the Creative Future Awards this year was an invigorating and challenging process. The shortlist of many innovative writers offered a glimpse of some of the most exciting writing being produced in the UK today. In the Poetry and Fiction categories, writers boldly pushed boundaries of
genre and form. In Creative Non-Fiction there was an incredible range of stories and voices covering subjects I’d not encountered before. I was drawn all the way in and longed to keep reading. It’s been a joy and an honour to be involved in this prize that is helping to reshape our literary landscape.“
Judge of the 2024 Creative Future Writers’ Award, award winning poet and editor, Wayne Holloway-Smith, says:
“I like bands’ initial albums, and I like artists at the start of their careers. I like seeing footballers stepping into the first team for the first time, and I like watching debut directors at the movies. It’s invigorating to me to see raw talent finding its way, in this way – that often, initial burst of ambition, and excitement – the kernel of a voice emerging, the level of risk practitioners are free to take at this stage. No wonder the process of judging Creative Future was such a source of joy – the originality and imagination, the vocabulary of these newcomers, crikey!“
Creative Future’s CEO, Rose Kigwana, says:
“Having had the pleasure of observing the judging panel meeting and reading the excellent variety of shortlisted entries, I look forward to meeting the 2024 competition winners and celebrating their talent with them.“
The additional judges were prize partners Joey Connolly (Faber Academy), Tessa Foley (Poetry School), Jennifer Kerslake (Curtis Brown Creative), and Aki Schilz (The Literary Consultancy).
Creative Future Writers’ Awards, the UK’s only national writing competition and development programme for all underrepresented writers, has a hugely successful track record for discovering and nurturing talented new writers who traditionally lack opportunities due to mental health issues, disability, identity, health or social circumstance, and is ‘helping to reshape our literary landscape,’ says judge Nina Mingya Powles.
The Award, with its highly successful track record for discovering and nurturing emerging talent, has changed lives of over one hundred writers, breaking down barriers and giving them a huge boost towards publication and writing career. One third of all previous winners now have books published. Previous winners include Kirsty Capes, bestselling author of Girls (2024) and Careless, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize 2022; Lisette Auton author of three children’s novels including Lights Up (Puffin 2024); poet Romalyn Ante who was named as an Open Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; Rhiya Pau winner of the Eric Gregory Award (2022); and Tom Newlands, whose debut novel Only Here, Only Now (2024) was a Guardian Book of the Day.
A Prize fund of £23,000 worth of cash and top writing development prizes supplied by prominent publishers, authors and development agencies, will be shared between this year’s winners to help develop their writing careers. The winning submissions, alongside work by the 2024 Award judges, are published in an anthology which can be purchased from Creative Future.
An Awards Ceremony featuring the winning writers and head judges will take place at the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival on Saturday 26th October at 7.30pm. Tickets are available from the Southbank Centre website, and the event will also be livestreamed.
Congratulations to Ibrahim and Francis-Xavier!
Bakare Oluwatobiloba
I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!
