Musonda Mukuka is one of six Zambian writers shortlisted for the 2025 Ubwali Hope Prize, presented by Ubwali Literary Magazine in partnership with Shenandoah. The Prize celebrates the best of Zambian prose and poetry. One winner is selected each year, receives an honorarium of $500, is featured in the fall issue of Shenandoah, has future publication in the Journal of African Youth and Literature (JAY Lit) and a year-long virtual writing mentorship with Mubanga Kalimamukwento.
Musonda Mukuka was shortlisted for her essay, “Tethered”, published in Issue 6 of Ubwali Literary Magazine. The essay can be read here.
Below is our “Quick Seven Questions” interview with Musonda Mukuka.
Enjoy!
~
Q1 – Who is Musonda Mukuka?
I guess I would describe both myself and my art as things driven by intensity. I feel things a lot. Small things tend to have a major impact on me. And in my day-to-day life, my goal is for my actions and my being to have an impact on those around me. As a person, I want to make you feel things for the better; as a writer, I want to make you feel things at all. I want to bottle up all these intense emotions, whether magical or miserable and try to recreate them on paper in hopes that they make the reader feel something.
It’s interesting because I feel like there’s a lot of unravelling you have to do to come to a definite statement about who you are, and for me, a lot of that unravelling happens on the page.
Q2 – What is the inspiration behind “Tethered”?
I came up with the opening sentences about 3 years ago. I sat with them for a long time and knew the rest of the essay was something I wanted to pursue, but the rest of the words weren’t ready to come out yet. That was the starting point, though, and I found myself mulling over the elements of my life that led to the essay a lot.
It was while I was doing a residency in 2025 that elements of the essay became a lot clearer. I was having a slow afternoon and sitting alone in the library, unsure of how to proceed with any of the writing I had in progress. I picked up a book with a pretty cover and spent the rest of the evening reading it. It was the graphic novel Frida Kahlo: The Story of Her Life by Vanna Vinci. I knew very little about Frida Kahlo beforehand, but what struck me about the book, other than the artwork, was how so much of her life, and so much of her art, was contextualising her existence. I decided to write an essay contextualising mine, not necessarily exploring myself, but the circumstances by which I came about, and from there, the rest of the essay flowed.
I grew up in other countries and only moved to Zambia a couple of years back. And to people who were not raised in it, I think there are a lot of assumptions about children raised in the diaspora. The biggest one being that there’s a sense of displacement, or you are “defined by that “loss:” It’s not how I define myself,f but it’s often how I am defined. It’s the first question I get asked when I get in a cab or when I’m at a cash register because of my accent. And it’s hard to explain to people who have defined their life by space how that cannot be a factor to you. How you can be rooted in things that aren’t necessarily geographical? How you can find a home in people and unexpected elements? This essay was an attempt to explain that to them and myself, and a huge part of the writing was the process of unfurling to myself. As often happens, I only realise things when writing them.
Q3 – What hopes did you have for the essay when you were submitting it to Ubwali Literary Magazine?
I wanted the essay to go to people who would understand it. I did not want what I was trying to say to get lost in translation. There are things, like the name of the hospital I mentioned, that instantly meant something to Zambians.
And like with all pieces of my writing, I just hoped it made the readers feel something. That there was a sentence or a feeling that lingered long after the last word.
Q4 – What does ending up on the Ubwali Hope Prize shortlist mean to you?
So much of writing is self-imposed isolation. Is sitting alone with your thoughts and a pen or a keyboard for hours or days on end. It’s a deeply personal thing, obsessing over words and sentences, hoping that they’ll touch the reader the way you intend them to. And most of the work in improving your craft takes place alone. So to have these moments of validation, even if it’s in the form of someone saying they enjoyed your work or a sentence or a character touched them, or even being shortlisted for something like this? Those moments are like fuelers and boosters, and they make sustaining a habit that so often feels like your efforts can be drops in an ocean so much more bearable.
Q5 – What would winning mean to you?
Shenandoah is such a prestigious magazine that has published so much incredible work and so many incredibly talented writers; it would be such a big honour to have my name and my words in it.
Beyond that, it would definitely be fulfilling something that’s been on my list of writing hopes for a while.
Q6 – How has this changed, inspired, motivated, or improved you, the writer?
This is definitely a booster. A very useful bit of validation I can cling to when the writing journey feels tumultuous. Writing is such a high effort, low return activity that if you’re not sustained purely by the love of it, it doesn’t work. This is definitely something I’ll hold onto and pile onto the love I have for the art, the next time I feel like throwing my laptop out the window.
Q7 – What plans do you have for your writing?
In terms of my journalism, I’m interested in exploring longer forms of media. There’s an incredible amount of real Zambian stories, historical events or occurrences that simply aren’t recorded. I want to explore mediums – whether that be podcasts or longer articles where these stories can be distributed.
In terms of my creative writing I have a lot of projects in progress at the moment. I’m consistently submitting short stories and essays to lit mags, and my biggest hope is to eventually be able to release novels. Either way, regardless of whether people see the output or not, I’ll still be writing.
~
Musonda is a Zambian journalist and emerging creative writer whose poetry and short stories have appeared in Ubwali Literary Magazine. She contributed to the Lover’s Rock anthology published by Bold Ambition Books, and one of her short stories is forthcoming in Copper Monstera’s The Boy in the Red Car and Other Stories. She took part in the inaugural Ubwali Masterclass and is a 2025 Modzi Arts artist-in-residence. In addition to her creative writing, she has contributed numerous articles to Nkwazi Magazine and other platforms. She was selected as a screenwriter for the 2026 Zambian Women in Film and Television Short Film Festival Lab.
