South Africa’s Lindani Mbunyuza-Memani is one of the few wordsmiths who can say they won an award before their work was even published! Thanks to her win of the 2024 Dinaane Debut Fiction Award, her book Buried in the Chest will get to be on shelves!
Southern Africa (24 July 2024) — The Jacana Literary Foundation has named the winner of the 2024 Dinaane Debut Fiction Award with a South African wordsmith coming out on top!
Writer and academic Lindani Mbunyuza-Memani who lives and teachers at Jefferson College in the USA has claimed the 2024 title (previously known as The European Union Literary Award for Debut Fiction) for her book, Buried in the Chest. Her win meant not only a cash prize, but also the publication of her book by Jacana Media!
Submissions for the award were as diverse as the authors themselves, with rookie writers across Southern Africa sharing their words, thoughts and perceptions—some for the very first time. For the judges, however, Lindani’s ‘Buried in the Chest’ stood out for its “astonishingly fresh and accomplished” approach.
The judging panel included head judge Rehana Roussouw (who boasts a lengthy career in journalism, fiction and non-fiction writing), Jennifer Malec (founding editor of The Johannesburg Review of Books and The Reading List) and Robert Muponde (critic, editor, writer and English PhD) who together, reviewed 60 manuscript submissions.
They sang the Lindani’s praises, sharing:
“Buried in the Chest deals with familiar themes in South African writing, but with an approach that is astonishingly fresh and accomplished. The author interrogates the painful history of apartheid with a unique literary approach, and the book will linger in the heart and mind long after reading. This poetic novel is the kind of inventive truth telling South Africa urgently needs as we continue to grapple with the past and imagine a better future for all.”
For any first time author, publication is an incredible achievement all its own. But for Lindani, winning the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award sets her a few pages ahead as one of the few authors who can say they won an award before they landed a book deal.
Sources: Jacana Media; Wits Publishing Studies
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