Q&As: Jendella Benson – Judging the Caine Prize 2023

By Africa in Words on 3 November , 2023 • ( 0 )

AiW note: Today marks the last day in the series of twinned Caine Prize shortlist 2023 interviews we have been running through the week. A month ago yesterday, on the 2nd October, Senegalese entrant Woppa Diallo & Mame Bougouma Diene’s ‘A Soul of Small Places’ was announced as the winning story for this, the 24th iteration of the Prize.

Today, we hear from Caine Prize judge, Jendella Benson, who talks about being on the panel, the enjoyable negotiations and the inevitable “little heartbreaks” of the shortlisting process (joining with fellow judging panelist Kadija George Sesay’s Q&A from Wednesday’s offering in the series).

We also have responses to the Caine Prize shortlist 2023 Q&A today from the story writers, Woppa and Mame Bougouma, who, as with all of our shortlisted writers, judges, and publishers in the series, we spoke to before the prize-giving ceremony when they were announced as the 2023 winners 🎉 (linking up with yesterday’s Q&A with editor at TorDotCom, the publishers of ‘A Soul of Small Places’, Eli Goldman, in a publisher Q&A as part of the series so far).

Both of the Caine Prize shortlist Q&As in today’s duo highlight milestones for the Prize in a year that’s seen some notable firsts and shifts: Woppa and Mame Bougouma’s win marks a first, since the Prize’s inception in 2000, for a husband and wife writing duo; and Jendella was part of the first all-women judging panel — with Kadija George Sesay, Edwidge Dro, Warsan Shire, and Chair Fareda Banda…

Jendella Benson is a British-Nigerian author and editor. Her debut novel Hope & Glory was published in April 2022 and her short story Kindle was published in The Book of Birmingham collection. She is Head of Editorial at Black Ballad – the award-winning digital magazine and membership community for black women in Britain and beyond – and has written for The Sunday Times STYLE, The Independent and The Telegraph. Originally from Birmingham, she is now based in London and is working on her second novel.

AiW: Thanks so much for speaking with us, Jendella. We are excited to share your take on the Prize and experience of the stories that have been part of it this year.

Could we open, please, with a bit of a picture of your judging the Caine Prize for African Writing this year, perhaps something our readers might not yet know, or that they might need to, about judging a literary prize or being on a panel? What does it mean for you to be working with this Prize now, in this, our current moment?

Jendella Benson: I enjoyed the judging process a lot more than I thought I would. Having such a panel of judges, each with their own specific tastes and framework for what makes a good story was enlightening, but also made the judging process a negotiation and in the process of it, there were stories that I absolutely loved that didn’t make it to the shortlist stage, because we needed to have some kind of consensus. But even with these little heartbreaks, it shows how great a place African writing is at the moment. That we could spend hours going to bat for stories that we loved and having the back and forth with our esteemed colleagues, shows that there is so much breadth and diversity in the work that is being produced right now. That’s exciting.

Could you tell us about your work more broadly – with African writing but also any overlaps with the (other) kinds of work you do, the roles you hold, or the more general and different sorts of professional hats you wear?

My day job, as it were, is as Head of Editorial for Black Ballad, the foremost digital publication and membership community for Black women in the UK and beyond. I spend my days commissioning and editing non-fiction from Black women that covers the span of pop culture, beauty, politics, relationships, current affairs, education – anything and everything really. Then I am also an author, having published my novel Hope & Glory in 2022 and with another novel coming next year. I’ve also published a short story in the Book of Birmingham collection. But I guess foremost, I am a fan of literature, African literature and storytelling in particular.

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)?

“Feel the fear and do it anyway.” There are many ways we try and deal with fear before doing the scary thing, some people stockpile qualifications like armour to feel like they have external validation that they are ready, some people try and reason their way out of their feelings by attacking their fear with hard facts as to why they shouldn’t be afraid. These things aren’t necessarily wrong, but for me, I’ve learned that fear is there because you care deeply about this thing and that care is a good thing – so feel everything that you’re feeling, but decide that you’re going to do the scary thing anyway. Because regret of not doing the thing, not being where you want to be, is often more bitter and longer-lasting than the initial stomach-drop of taking the leap forward.

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 have been fortunate to meet all of my writing heroes, apart from the ones that have passed on, and I think it is wild that a love of books – and therefore a love of writing – has created this adult reality that child-me would have not even considered. I think about that often, how I “wrote myself” into my dream life and that started by being a child getting home an hour later than I should have from school because I was so engrossed in the book I was reading that I missed my bus stop and ended up at the terminus. That is actual magic to me.

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 (jobs, roles, avenues, practices)?

There is a lot to be said about BookTok, the pros and the cons, but I love how you can find niches within the wider “community” and seeing normal readers – not like, mega-influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers – but just readers with a couple hundred followers posting about the African books and African writers that they love is just great. So many books have landed on my radar that way, and not like “BookTok Books” that are going viral and getting all the placement in real world bookshops, but books that I have to go and search online for because they’re only published by an African publishing house or similar. That is what makes the whole thing exciting for me.

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

Read widely. Don’t just read the African authors who get the co-sign from the big literary awards or are published by the larger publishing houses. Read those published by indie publishers, read those who aren’t published in the West, read those who writing from the Continent but also from the Diaspora, read genre fiction, read literary fiction, read poetry, read short fiction and all the collections and online journals that exist. Read widely and when you love something share with everyone that you know. In general, we spend too much time online complaining about the things we don’t like and not enough time sharing the things we do.

Head on over to the Caine Prize website for links to read all the 2023 shortlisted stories in full.

And find the “twin” to Jendella’s Q&A today, with Mame Bougouma Diene and Woppa Diallo via the AiW x Caine Prize Q&A link, or by searching our site for “Caine Prize”.

That same link will take you to our Search Results page where you can click through for all of our 2023 posts in the Caine Prize shortlist 2023 Q&A series so far — with writer Tlotlo Tamaase and editor Eli Goldman on behalf of publishers TorDotCom (yesterday), with writer Yejide Kilanko & judge Kadija George Sesay (Wednesday), with writer Yvonne Kusiima and publisher Ukamaka Olisakwe of Isele Magazine (Tuesday).

Also on that link, you can deep dive into the 10 years’ worth of archive this year that AiW have been thinking on, in various ways, the Caine Prize. You can wander back and forth through that archive here – Q&As, reviews, and long-read thought pieces – at that same search link for “Caine Prize”.

As ever, we’d welcome your thoughts on the shortlist, or anything else 2023 Caine Prize related (or just anything else, for that matter!) – comment on the post here, below, or contact us direct and let us know. Thank you for being here with us.

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.