Zimbabwean writer Blessing Musariri has been named among the finalists for the 2026 Kirkus Prize for her young adult novel, When It’s Your Turn for Midnight.
The only African author among the 18 finalists selected across the Kirkus Prize’s Fiction, Nonfiction and Young Readers’ Literature categories, the Zimbabwean writer’s book is one of two finalists in the Young Adult section of the Young Readers’ Literature category, alongside Elizabeth Acevedo’s Anger Is Only a Shadow.
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing (under its Zephyr imprint) in the UK in 2024, and by Lerner Publishing Group (under its Carolrhoda Lab imprint) in the United States in April 2026, When It’s Your Turn for Midnight follows 15-year-old Chianti Minana after her mother reveals that the man she has known as her father is not her biological father. Chianti leaves Harare for her maternal grandmother’s home in Mutare, where she becomes immersed in the lives of her grandmother and her friends, women whose bonds were forged during Zimbabwe’s War of Independence in the 1970s. The women run a secondhand clothing business, and Chianti becomes involved in promoting it on TikTok while also uncovering photographs and a notebook connected to their wartime past.
Blessing Musariri is a poet, screenwriter, and author of children’s books, short stories, radio and screenplays, and contemporary adult fiction, with work published by the Guardian, Granta, and Poetry International. Her children’s books have won national awards in Zimbabwe, and she is part of the Crossing Borders Project, a creative writing scheme supported by the British Council and Lancaster University.
Her books include the dystopian novel Only This Once Are You Immaculate, the YA novel All That It Ever Meant, and When It’s Your Turn for Midnight, published by Bloomsbury’s Zephyr imprint in the UK in 2024 and by Lerner Publishing’s Carolrhoda Lab imprint in the US in April 2026.
She also won a Cordite Books crime fiction contest for her manuscript “Useful Knowledge for a World Class Detective – The Black Mamba Journals.”
The winners of the 2026 Kirkus Prize will be announced on October 7 at a ceremony at Tribeca Rooftop in New York, with the event also scheduled to be livestreamed on Kirkus’ YouTube channel.
Congratulations, Blessing Musariri!
