Bontle Senne, Katherine Graham, Jayne Bauling and Mandy Collins have been longlisted for the sixth annual Golden Baobab Prizes for African children’s literature.
14 stories have been longlisted, selected from 210 stories received from 13 countries across Africa, with Ghana and South Africa earning four nominations each.
Bauling and Senne are up for the Early Chapter Book Prize, while Graham and Collins are in line for the Picture Book Prize.
Graham’s “Heaven Scent” and Bauling’s “Choke” were featured in Short Story Day Africa’s anthology Feast, Famine & Potluck.
“Stories submitted to the Golden Baobab Prizes go through an incredibly exhaustive evaluation process,” prize coordinator Delali Kumapley says. “We have a team of about 30 people from all over Africa and around the world that read and score each story. A winning story for the Golden Baobab Prizes gets evaluated at most six times by different readers. This year’s longlist represents a very strong crop of African writers.”