Wordsmith talent wins prestigious award
HARD work is paying off for a Tsomo-born writer, who after winning the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing this year, is now also one of four winners of the Morland Writing Scholarship.
Lidudumalingani Mqombothi said he was hoping to get a novel out of the deal.
“So you write at home and get some money [doing] so,” Mqombothi said.
“For a writer, any writer, it is an incredible opportunity.”
He and two other fiction winners, Abdul Adan and Nneoma Ike-Njoku, will each receive a grant of £18 000 (about R312 000) to allow them to take a year off to write a book.
Ayesha Harruna Attah won the non-fiction award of £27 000 (about R460 000), to be paid over a year-and-a-half to allow her additional time for research.
The awards were based on submissions of a book proposal and an excerpt of published writing.
The scholarship will focus on writing his debut novel, titled Let Your Children Name Themselves.
The novel will tell an intergenerational story of a family living in rural South Africa, with a focus on Babini – a gay adolescent struggling to come to terms with his sexuality and his place within his community.
Mqombothi is also a filmmaker and photographer and has published short stories, non-fiction and criticism in various publications.
The judges were Zimbabwean-born literary critic Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Sierra Leone-born writer Olufemi Terry and Kenyan author Muthoni Garland.
“We were especially concerned to choose scholars whose proposals promised books that had the potential to gain a wide, international readership,” Allfrey said. — ziphon@dispatch.co.za