At 25, Joshua Lubwama’s pen has, from Kampala, Uganda, shot him to relevance beyond his immediate environment, from appearing on the 2024 Afritondo Short Story Prize longlist (twice) to winning the UNESCO Youth Essay Contest in 2022. Most recently, he was announced as the African regional winner of the prestigious Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2025, something he believes is his biggest achievement yet. However, for someone whose journey is one that inspires passionate creativity and perseverance, it’s easy to see him achieving much greater heights in the near future.
Joshua isn’t sure he’s as avid a reader, but he’s read many of the important titles—important by way of opinion of those he looks up to—in the western literary canon. He read ‘Shame’, an excerpt from Dick Gregory’s autobiography Nigger, in secondary school which inspired him to pursue a writing career. Dick says in the book, ‘Dear Momma—wherever you are, if ever you hear the word ‘nigger’ again, remember they are advertising my book. This is a statement that Joshau finds both hilarious and inspiring. At about the same time, he read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which eventually became his favourite book. Till date, he continues to reference it in many ways in his stories.
Joshua’s major influences have been Harper Lee and Flannery O’Connor. He resents that Harper Lee didn’t write enough. He harbours a profound reverence for Jhumpa Lahiri, Wole Soyinka and Remy Ngamije, citing Remy as his favourite African author. He has also found inspiration in the lives and works of many of his contemporaries like Charlie Muhumuza, Buke Abdub Galma and Frank Njugi.
The award-winning writer tried his hand at poetry for some time as most prose writers do at some point in their writing journey. In 2022, he decided to focus primarily on writing fiction. It so happened that during his time at Makerere University, Joshua and a friend of his founded a monthly mostly-students-only digital literary magazine called Inverbally. The magazine published thirteen issues, with Joshua as chief editor. It was during this period that he transitioned from poetry to fiction, writing both as himself and under a pseudonym to make up for the scarcity of submissions to the magazine.
As chief editor, Joshua had his first experience of what Elizabeth Gilbert meant when she said, “writing is unglamourous disciplined labour.” He discovered that intentionality had suddenly taken some of the pleasure out of the writing process. Looking back, he admits that it was all very important for his growth as a creative. He learned the art of editing, how to undermine writer’s block—as is necessarily the case with any writer working with a deadline—but most of all, his pieces for the magazine were the early beginnings of what he hopes to someday call a mastery of the short story form.
Joshua writes literary fiction mostly. Although, he does not own a large body of literary works, it is evident that the themes primarily of interest to him are family, identity, and social justice. With his writing, he delves into the emotional and psychological landscapes of his characters, examining how personal and collective histories shape people’s lives. Joshua is part of a new wave of emerging literary talents from Uganda, a country with a quaint number of literary talents. The 60’s and 70’s had seen the country be a vibrant and influential literary centre on the continent, particularly with Makerere University being a hub for East African literary talents like Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Okot p’Bitek, but that has since changed, with the Nigerians, South Africans, Kenyans, and Ghanaians writing all the books making it off the continent. Joshua is one of the talented writers hoping to fully stamp Uganda upon that map as well.
In Joshua’s words, Uganda has got an interesting post-colonial history, punctuated with stints of bloodshed and unrest, but has also got some of the most pleasant and hospitable people in the world. It’s a country with a very young population—the second youngest in the world—with over three-quarters of Ugandans below the age of thirty-five. Joshua’s writing is informed by the politics of society, familial and marital dynamics, schoolboy experiences, and—most recently—the workplace.
Joshua had the privilege of attending a creative writing and research skills workshop funded by UNESCO and PEN International and facilitated by Khainga O’Okwemba, Alex Wanjala, and Tom Odhiambo. In 2023, while editing for Inverbally, Joshua wasn’t just longlisted for the Afritondo Prize, the first competition he ever submitted to, he was published in a subsequent anthology titled, The Anatomy of Flying Things. He repeated this feat the next year, getting published in the Afritondo anthology Travelling Men Don’t Die. That same year, 2024, he was also longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and was selected as a fellow for the African Writers Trust Residency in Kampala under the mentorship of renowned Ugandan author Goretti Kyomuhendo and Kenyan editor and journalist Otieno Owino.
Joshua’s incredible feat winning the Africa regional award in the 2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize is a victory three years in the making, having been rejected in 2023 and making the longlist in 2024. It is worth noting that the judging process for an overall winner is still underway, with the award ceremony scheduled for Wednesday, the 25th of June. Joshua’s winning entry ‘Mothers Not Appearing in Search’ has been published in Granta and is forthcoming in adda and Paper + Ink. His writing journey is an inspiration not just as at a local level but to writers all over the globe. For Joshua, this is only the beginning, and he looks forward to sharing more poignant and impactful works.
We’re rooting for Joshua for the overall winners’ crown for the 2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize when the announcement is made later in June 2025.
Oreoluwa Odusote
Writer, poet, and dreamer.
