The 2024 Granum Prize has been revealed. Featuring an impressive array of talented writers, three Africans have made the cut:
Kanyinsola Olorunnisola, Tega Oghenechovwen, and Koye Oyedeji, all of Nigerian descent.
Meet the writers
Kanyin Olorunnisola is a Nigerian writer, editor, and filmmaker. He is the author of two chapbooks and the director of the short film, Chiaroscuro. His writing appears in Al Jazeera, FIYAH, Georgia Review, Harvard’s Transition, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the University of Alabama.
Tega Oghenechovwen is a 2024 Kimbilio Fellow and a 2024 Tin House Scholar. His work exploring social justice, displacement, and communal grief has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Joyland, Ruminate Magazine, The Rumpus, Longreads and elsewhere. Originally from Jos, Nigeria, Tega lives in Maryland where he is in the MFA program at the University of Maryland, studying fiction.
Koye Oyedeji is a Washington D.C-based writer who was born in the United Kingdom to Nigerian parents. His writings have appeared in Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, Wasafiri Magazine, The Believer and elsewhere. He has also contributed to a number of anthologies, including The Fire People (Canongate Press) and IC3: The Penguin Book of Black British Writing (Penguin).
The Granum Prize, established by the Granum Foundation, is a prestigious annual literary award that recognizes and rewards exceptional unpublished manuscripts with a monetary prize of $5000. The prize aims to discover and promote new talent, bridging cultural gaps and enriching the global literary landscape with diverse voices.
Congratulations Kanyinsola, Tega, and Koye!
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.