Q&As: Mame Bougouma Diene and Woppa Diallo – Caine Prize shortlist 2023 – winners

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

AiW note: Today is the last in our 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, ‘A Soul of Small Places’ , by husband and wife duo Woppa Diallo & Mame Bougouma Diene, was announced as the winning story for this, the 24th iteration of the Prize.

We’ve run this series in duos because, following on from last year’s coverage, we wanted to continue to highlight the less visible avenues and labour involved in literary prizes and open up some of the connections between writing, publishing, judging and reading that underlie the “prizing” of literature.

Here, in the writer Q&A in the series for today, we hear from Woppa and Mame Bougouma, who, as with all of our shortlisted writers, judges, and publishers in the series, we spoke with before the prize-giving ceremony 🎉 (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).

The twin Q&A today is 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).

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: Jendella was part of the first all-women judging panel — with Kadija George Sesay, Edwidge Dro, Warsan Shire, and Chair Fareda Banda; and Woppa and Mame Bougouma’s win marks the first for a husband and wife duo, since the Prize’s inception in 2000…

Mame Bougouma Diene is a Franco –Senegalese American humanitarian based in Pretoria, the francophone spokesperson for the African Speculative Fiction Society (http://www.africansfs.com/), the French language editor for Omenana Magazine, and a regular columnist at Strange Horizons. You can find his fiction and nonfiction work in Omenana, Galaxies SF, Edilivres, Fiyah! Truancy Magazine, EscapePod, Mythaxis, Apex Magazine and TorDotCom; and in anthologies such as AfroSFv2 & V3 (Storytime), Myriad Lands (Guardbridge Books), You Left Your Biscuit Behind (Fox Spirit Books), This Book Ain’t Nuttin to Fuck Wit (Clash Media), Africanfuturism (Brittle Paper), Dominion (Aurelia Leo), Meteotopia (Future Fiction/Co-Futures in English and Italian), Bridging Worlds (Jembefola Press) and Africa Risen (TorDotCom). His novelette The Satellite Charmer is translated in Italian by Moscabianca Edizioni, his novelette Ogotemmeli’s Song is translated in Bangla (Joydhak Prakashan). He was nominated for several Nommo Awards, and his debut collection Dark Moons Rising on a Starless Night (Clash Books) was nominated for the 2019 Splatterpunk Award.

Woppa Diallo is a lawyer with a specialisation in human rights, humanitarian action and peace promotion. She is a feminist activist committed to social change and the realisation of women’s rights. Woppa founded Association pour le Maintien des Filles à l’Ecole (AMFE) at fifteen in Matam, Senegal, to ensure fair access to education for girls, eradicate gender-based stereotypes, promote sexual & reproductive health, and the continued socialisation of girls-victims of gender-based violence.

AiW: [a nudge… we spoke with Woppa and Mame Bougouma before the announcement of their win]. Congratulations to you both on being shortlisted for the 2023 Caine Prize for African Writing. Thank you for your story and for talking with us.

Could we open with a bit about some of the “other lives” or pre-lives of your Caine Prize shortlisted story, perhaps something that our readers might not yet know (or that they should, or need to know) about it?

Mame Bougouma Diene: The earliest memory about writing it was listening to Woppa describe her work in Agnam and Matam, specifically how she described Matam when visiting a teenage girls shelter outside Dakar. In most of Senegal you can see a house for miles but not in Matam where there are bushes etc etc. That was the exact moment where the story came to life. It hasn’t changed at all since then. Some minor tweaking in the edits but that’s about it.

Could you tell us a bit about your (other) work — your writing and/or other kinds of work, roles, or the more general and different sorts of professional hats you wear?

Mame Bougouma Diene: I write speculative fiction of all sorts sci-fi horror and fantasy mostly. Otherwise I work full time for the United Nations in South Africa.

Woppa Diallo: I am a jurist and a human rights gender and education expert and founder of an NGO in Matam focusing on eradicating GBV and ensuring girls’ education.

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

Mame Bougouma Diene: Honestly, downloading MS Word on my android. I could write on the go, to the point where I can’t write on a computer anymore. Only on my phone. Professionally probably joining the Peace Corps in Bangladesh.

Woppa Diallo: Getting a Law degree.

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?

Mame Bougouma Diene: Getting published by Tor. I grew up with Tor on my bookshelves. Now they published me twice for fiction and nonfiction. I feel like I’ve lived the dream that way. Nothing weird that I can remember right now.

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 forwa?

Mame Bougouma Diene: The writing scene is really opening up. There used to be a very western centric standard when it came to what counted as literature, or genre fiction. There still is in many ways. Coming from the most unexpected and disappointing of places sometimes, but the rise in authors from Africa, Asia etc and seeing them resonate in the West as well as across the globe is really heartwarming.

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

Mame Bougouma Diene: A big fat paycheck!

Head on over to the Caine Prize website for links to read ‘A Soul of Small Places’ (2022, TorDotCom) and all the 2023 shortlisted stories in full.

And find the “twin” to our writer Q&A today, with judge Jendella Benson via this 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. Thanks to the Caine Prize. And 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.