Q&As: Ukamaka Olisakwe – Publishing the Caine Prize shortlist 2023

By Africa in Words on 31 October , 2023 • ( 0 )

AiW note: Continuing our new Words on… Q&A series, this week, we are publishing a range of interviews around the UK-based short story award, the Caine Prize for African Writing, 2023. There have been a few notable firsts that have helped shape the Prize this year, not least the change of season (from a July to an October winner announcement); so, in the lead up to the prize-giving on October 2nd, and following on from last year’s coverage highlighting the less visible avenues and labour involved in “prizing” writing, we spoke to some of the writers on the shortlist, as well as publishers of their stories and judges who determined the list. A series of twinned Q&As, to open up interviewees’ involvement in the Prize in 2023, follow.

In this Q&A, we speak with Ukamaka Olisakwe, founder and editor-in-chief of the beautifully produced Isele Magazine, the publishing forum for two 2023 Caine Prize shortlisted stories, Ekemini Pius’ ‘Daughters, By Our Hands’ (Nigeria), and Yvonne Kusiima (Uganda) for ‘Weaving’ – whose Q&A is twinned with Ukamaka’s today…

Ukamaka Olisakwe grew up in Nigeria and now lives in the United States. A UNESCO Africa39 honoree, a University of Iowa IWP fellow, a VCFA Emerging Writer Scholarship winner, a Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship finalist, and a Gerald Kraak Prize runner-up, her works have appeared in the New York Times, Granta, Guernica, Longreads, The Rumpus, Catapult, The Johannesburg Review of Books, Google Arts & Culture, and elsewhere. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Isele Magazine.

AiW: Many thanks, Ukamaka, for agreeing to speak with us as a publisher of not one, but two stories on the Caine Prize shortlist 2023, and to open up what are often less visible roles in the outcomes of a literary prize. At AiW, we feel these routes are particularly important in the broader ecosystems of the literary circulation and valuation of African writing, and are grateful to have your thoughts.

As its publisher, could you tell us about your journey of/with the 2023 Caine Prize shortlisted stories you published in Isele Magazine, your “story of the story”, so to speak? How did they come to you? What made you “see” them, and as Caine Prize stories? Why this, why now?

Ukamaka Olisakwe: We run two circles at Isele Magazine—the regular issues and the quarterly issues. Each segment is championed by a dedicated editor, while I, the editor-in-chief, supervise and co-edit both issues with them. Tracy Haught manages our regular circles, while Yvonne Wabai handles our quarterlies. And it was a pleasant surprise when we received the email from the Caine Prize informing us that two of our stories made this year’s shortlist. Now, this is where it gets interesting: each of those stories came from different circles! Wabai’s segment, the Quarterly, produced Ekemini Pius’s fantastic story, “Daughters By Our Hands,” while Haught’s circle produced Yvonne Kusiima’s “Weaving.” I was in real tears, honestly. Our editors work so hard and it was so great to see them equally rewarded and recognized by such a platform.

For Pius’s story, I realized that there was so much soul in the early draft; he was playing with genre. Here is a story set in a world that looks like ours but is a little bit different, the difference being in how children are brought into the world. Beyond being a feminist story, it also makes great social commentary about family and love and community, and the early draft needed a little bit of burnishing to bring those textures to the surface. So I worked with Pius. We did a few back and forth before we arrived at a final draft. And when it was time to select stories to submit for the Caine Prize, I knew that his work stood a lot of chance.

Kusiima’s story came almost fully made. Her language is lyrical. When Tracy noticed her submission, she loved it immediately and quickly sent Kusiima an offer, with a note suggesting a restructuring of the ending that would carry a stronger emotional depth, especially considering the strong themes her story explores. She called my attention too, and we were proud of the quality of the submissions we continued to receive at Isele Magazine. Tracy worked closely with Kusiima and when it was time for our in-house judges to nominate works to the 2023 Isele Short Story Prize, hers was top of the list. It also made the shortlist. We had a hard time voting on a winner because “Weaving” is that brilliant. And when it was time to send in our stories for the Caine Prize, we didn’t even pause.

Now I look back to how far these stories have come and my heart is full.

Please tell us a bit more about your work more broadly with African writing and how things are on the ground for you now in the publishing industry.

It’s been such a rewarding journey, publishing works that put works by African writers in conversation with the world. Our goal is to publish works that hold the mirror to society, works that are defiant, works that challenge ways of being. As I noted earlier, we run two circles: the regular issues and the quarterly issues, and we are lucky to have such a dedicated team of editors and interns who keep those engines running. We also publish art and photography.

Toward the end of 2021, we decided to curate annual anthologies of select works, and our inaugural issue of The Best of Isele Anthology was published in 2022 by Iskanchi Press. Soon, we will be announcing the publisher of this year’s anthology shortly.

The only challenge I suppose we have is with funding; Isele is currently funded by personal finances. It’s such a tough time for literary magazines, what with literary magazines closing shop, the most recent being the prestigious White Review. But we are committed to walking this path. We hope that things will get better and that we will somehow figure out a sustainable source that will keep us afloat.

What would you say is the best investment you’ve made in your professional self / selves, and/or the most valued advice you’ve received about navigating your industry (or industries)?

The advice that has kept me going is to always remember why I ventured into this path in the first place. Isele Magazine is named after my late grandmother, a dancer and a performer, who I loved very much. Her fire and her fearlessness in the time of war, especially after she lost her husband and raised all five children alone, have been my motivation. And every time our pocket runs dry and I wonder how we would get around to paying our contributors the little honorarium that we can afford (because I strongly believe that artists should be paid for their work), it is my grandmother’s zeal that keeps me going.

Looking to you as a reader, what’s the strangest, most significant – outrageous, even – thing you yourself have done, or would do, because of, or for a book (text / story / poem/ piece of writing)? Perhaps there’s a serendipitous, interesting, or uncanny book / text related thing that’s happened to you, or a happy, weird accident that has occurred around books or writing that you can share with us?

I twerked for a book. It is ridiculous and funny: my friend and I wanted to read Ann Patchett’s new book, Tom Lake, but the library had just one copy. I got it first, right before my friend could walk into grab it. She begged to read it first since I was still reading Monica Heisey Really Good, Actually, but I wouldn’t budge. So, we did a twerk-off. She won. I’m rusty.

What are the most ethical and/or heart-lifting changes in practice you’ve seen happening across your industry/industries recently and what would you like to see become more visible going forward?

I think what I love most is the blend in the assortment of flavors when it comes to work published by African writers. Almost gone are the days of staunch policing, when certain works are deemed “high literature” and others relegated to the fringes. Now, you would walk down the streets of Twitter or Instagram or even Tiktok, and you will find a blend in genres, with readers placing works like The Middle Daughter on the same shelf as Bridges are for Burning, and next to all this is The List and Kintu and Tomorrow I Become a Woman, and while you are still catching your breath, Dazzling is thrown into the mix. I want to believe that the old borders are falling; walls are being pulled down and the textures of our realities are now splayed out like a patchwork, within which the contemporary reader pieces together our many stories. I really like that.

We see this happening in our magazines too, with places like Isele Magazine and Agbowo Art and Lolwe, publishing writers across genres, bending the walls, so that our story flow in and out, creating new pathways that will no longer be defined by the inchoate and alienating structures of the past.

Finally, how can our blog, books, and online communities best offer support for your work with African writing?

Publishing this interview is one way to draw attention to the work we do. This visibility is important; it provides us with a broader audience, some of whom might include people or organizations that offer financial support to literary outlets like ours. We are grateful for the opportunity. We do hope that you will continue to push our work and perhaps create a bimonthly or quarterly series highlighting select works published in African-owned magazines. I am thinking of the kindness the Guernica Spotlight series accords not just to international writers but also to the magazines that publish them. That’s one way to help.

With grateful thanks to Ukamaka for her insights, please link through to Isele Magazine and support the work in whatever ways you can. And let us know of anything you’d like to see AiW do or spotlight as and if you’re inspired, anytime.

Although she’s not said it, keeping to the context of Isele‘s publishing and the Caine Prize shortlist for 2023, we also have a lovely conversation between Ukamaka and Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike about her novel, Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All Right, from the year of Ogadinma’s publication, 2020. Catch it here.

Today’s twinned AiW x Caine Prize 2023 Q&A is with Yvonne Kusiima (Uganda), one of the Caine Prize shortlisted story writers, for ‘Weaving’, published in Isele Magazine.

Read Yvonne’s story – and all the shortlisted stories – via the links at the Caine Prize website. We’d be delighted to hear from you about your thoughts on the shortlist, or anything else 2023 Caine Prize related (or indeed, anything at all!) – comment on the post below, or contact us direct and let us know.

This year marks 10 years that AiW have covered the Caine Prize. Thank you for being here with us. (! – you can browse through for its gems – Q&As, reviews, and long-read thought pieces – at the AiW search link Caine Prize here). And watch the blog for more from the series for 2023, opening up some of the shifts and firsts happening around the Caine Prize this year, as we hear from more shortlisted story writers and publishers, and some of the judges…

Caine Prize website, “The Caine Prize Announces, 2023 Shortlisted Writers and Judges”:

…This year’s submissions encompassed a diverse range of talent from 28 different countries, including Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Fareda Banda, Chair of Judges, and a professor of Law at SOAS, University of London, expressed her thoughts on the shortlist: “Together we have read, discussed and wrestled an eligible submission list of 230 stories down to the final five. This has not been an easy task. The entries showed the depth and scope of writing on the continent and beyond.

“The stories spanned generations, genres and themes. They challenged, stimulated, shocked, surprised and delighted us in equal measure. The five shortlisted embrace speculative fiction and artivism (using art as a form of activism). Stories of gender-based violence and reproductive autonomy highlight the power of engaging and innovative/original writing. Love is embodied in stories of grandmothers passing on inter-generational wisdom. The sense of alienation engendered by teenage diasporic liminality sits alongside comedic outrage about the perceived status downgrade in moving from city to village. Each story will have its fans and advocates-we loved them all.”

Banda further noted the remarkable fact that four out of the six shortlisted finalists reside in Africa, with two from the diaspora. This year’s shortlist also boasts a joint submission and an all-women judging panel, marking significant milestones in the history of the Caine Prize.