The 2023 shortlist will be announced later this year, while the winner will be announced on December 5, at The Centre for Fiction Annual Awards Benefit.
By Hope Ibiale
African writers, DK Nnuro and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, have been longlisted for the 2023 Centre for Fiction First Novel Prize for their books, What Napoleon Could Not Do and Chain-Gang All-Stars, respectively. This year’s longlist comprises twenty-five debut novels chosen from over 160 titles submitted for the prize. Other longlisted books include Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo, Under the Tamarind Tree by Nigar Alam, An Autobiography of Skin by Lakeisha Carr, Sea Change by Gina Chung, and more.
DK Nnuro is a Ghanaian-born writer who graduated from Johns Hopkins University, US, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Nnuro has previously taught novel writing at the University of Iowa and is currently the curator of special projects at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art.
(Read also: 15 Writers of African Descent Longlisted for the UK 2023 Diverse Book Awards)
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is an American-Ghanaian fiction author. His short story, Friday Black, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle: John Leonard Award for Best First Book and won the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Asides from being longlisted for the Centre for Fiction First Novel Prize, Adjei-Brenyah has also been shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize.
The Centre for Fiction First Novel Prize, administered by The Centre for Fiction, is an annual award that honours the best debut novels published in the year of review. The 2023 shortlist will be announced later this year, while the winner will be announced on December 5, at The Centre for Fiction Annual Awards Benefit. The prize winner receives $15,000 while the shortlisted authors will get $1,000 each.
A judging panel of four authors — to be announced — will choose the shortlist and the overall winner.
Check the other longlisted authors here.