Congrats to Sefi Atta!

THE NOMA AWARD FOR PUBLISHING IN AFRICA

PRESS RELEASE

31 October 2009

NIGERIAN WRITER OF GENIUS DISPLAYING COMPLETE MASTERY OF HER CRAFT WINS 2009 NOMA AWARD FOR HER COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES

The Noma Award for Publishing in Africa announces that Sefi Atta has won the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa 2009 for her collection of short stories Lawless and Other Stories.

The Jury’s citation reads:

“This collection of short stories and a novella represent the work of a first class writer. The gripping stories of the Nigerian quotidian are of consistently high quality and uniformly outstanding. The writer has an immense gift of language and mastery of narrative in which she redefines the Nigerian social imaginary. She tells her stories in different voices and from the perspective of a whole range of memorable characters, balancing content and form. She does not romanticise or demonise the world of her characters: her genius is to deprive the stories of their sensationalism, allowing her to display complete mastery of her craft. One of the most original, imaginative and gifted fiction writers in Africa, and arguably the best of her generation.”

Sefi Atta was educated in Nigeria, the UK and US, and is a former chartered accountant and a graduate of the Creative Writing Programme at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Her short stories have been published in literary journals, her radio plays have been broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation, and she has received many awards for her writing. She was the winner of the PEN International 2004/5 David T.K. Wong Prize, and won the first Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa in 2006 for her debut novel Everything Good Will Come.

The US$10,000 Noma Award, under the auspices of UNESCO, will be presented to Sefi Atta at a special ceremony in Africa, details of which will be announced later.