Everything you need to know about Irenosen Okojie – winner of Caine Prize for African Writing
Nigerian-British writer, Irenosen Okojie, won the 2020 AKO Caine prize for African writing for her short story Grace Jones, on Monday July 27, 2020.
The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, launched in 2000, is a literature prize awarded to an African writer of a short story published in English.
Okojie was announced winner of the £10,000 prize on Monday July 27 for her short story which tells the story of Sidra who lost her entire family in a house fire and finds herself working as an impersonator of the famous Jamaican singer, model and actress Grace Jones.
Caine organisers said Okojie:
“deftly layers the psychological trauma of the daily experience of a Black woman in contemporary British society and of the specific tragedy that befalls Sidra. In this heart-wrenching account of loss, fractured identity and bereavement.”
Here’s what we know about Okojie:
According to her personal story, Okojie was born in Nigeria before relocating to England when she was eight years old. While in England, she studied at Gresham’s Boarding School in Norfolk and later enrolled at St Angela’s Convent School in east London. As a teenager, Okojie briefly attended Stamford Boarding School for girls in Stamford, Lincolnshire before returning to London to finish her secondary education.
As a lover of arts who “read all kinds of books”, she headed for the London Metropolitan University to study Communications and Visual Culture.
Okojie was the National Development Coordinator at Apples & Snakes, a leading performance poetry organisation in England and a Publicity Officer for The Caine Prize For Fiction tour. She also worked on the live children’s show ‘Peter & the Wolf’ of The Southbank Centre, a complex of artistic venues in London. She is a fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.
Her debut novel, ‘Butterfly Fish’, published in June 2015, won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Edinburgh First Book Award. Her short story collection, ‘Speak Gigantular’ published in September 2016, was shortlisted for the Edgehill Short Story Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Saboteur Awards and nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award.
Okojie said her Benin (Edo State) roots influenced her choice of setting in her first book ‘Butterfly Fish’ which is set in both Benin and Britain.
She described late writer Buchi Emecheta as her heroine and said her writing reflected “my mother’s experience of being an immigrant in the west, the nuances so accurately depicted. It really resonated.”
Okojie told Melan Magazine in a 2017 interview that she
“also loved that Buchi (Emecheta) was fearless and driven, she didn’t let anything stop her from documenting her experiences. A heroine to me in terms of carving a space for your voice, seeing the value in it no matter what.”
Her short stories have been published internationally. In an interview at the 2015 edition of the Ake Arts and Book Festival, she shared some insights into why she likes to write short stories.
“I fell in love with short stories in a short form because I thought how fantastic they really suit the fast-paced life that we live,” she said.
The critically-acclaimed writer said her short stories are basically about characters who people don’t really see stuff written about, “they are about people unravelling.”
“That’s something I’m fascinated with, because I’m really interested in how people cope when they are marvelled. They are about people on the fringes, quite strange, quite weird just because I’m interested in weird stuff,” Okojie said.
Chair of Judges of the Caine Prize for African Writing, Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp, described Okojie’s award-winning story as a “world-class fiction from an African writer.”
“This year’s winner…is a radical story that plays with logic, time and place; it defies convention, as it unfolds a narrative that is multi-layered and multi-dimensional,” Olumuyiwa said.
He continues: “It is risky, dazzling, imaginative and bold; it is intense and full of stunning prose; it’s also a story that reflects African consciousness in the way it so seamlessly shifts dimensions, and it’s a story that demonstrates extraordinary imagination.”
On stories that ‘seamlessly shifts dimensions’, Irenosen Okojie said she believes great writings should cause a shift, “a response and a reaction basically and that’s what I hope to do with my work.”
