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established by the Granum Foundation, is a prestigious annual literary award that recognizes and rewards exceptional unpublished manuscripts with a monetary prize of $5000.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 writer whose fiction and poetry offers fresh, imaginative perspectives on the human condition. Her work has been published in prominent literary spaces, including Isele Magazine, Akowdee Magazine, the AVBOB Poetry Anthology, Journal of African Youth in Literature (JAY Lit), and more. She was also nominated for the 2025 Best of the Net Anthology. Bongiwe is one of six writers selected for the inaugural Caine Prize Online Editing program and serves as a content writer, peer reviewer, and tier three awards judge for JAYLit. Bridging inner reflection with speculative worlds, she continues to carve out a distinctive voice within contemporary African literature for a growing global audience.
