Chika Unigwe, Author of “On Black Sisters Street” wins the 2012 NLNG Prize for Literature – Carts Away $100,000 Prize!
Posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2012 at 8:14 PMBy Adeola Adeyemo
So excited to share this news! One of our favourite authors, Chika Unigwe, the author of “On Black Sisters Street” was today announced the winner of this year’s edition of Nigeria’s biggest prize for literature, the NLNG Prize for Literature.
She was announced winner of the literary award at a world press conference held at the Ocean View Restaurant in Victoria Island, Lagos.
Chika Unigwe is a Nigerian-born author and she writes in English and Dutch. She has a Ph.D in Literature from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. She has published short fiction in several anthologies, journals and magazines including Wasafiri (University of London), Moving Worlds (University of Leeds), Per Contra, Voices of the University of Wisconsin and Okike of the University of Nigeria.
In 2003, she was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing. In 2004, she won the BBC Short story Competition and a Commonwealth Short Story Competition award. In the same year, her short story made the top 10 of the Million Writers Award for best online fiction.
Her book made the final shortlist of 3. The other two entries were Only a Canvas by Olusola Olugbesan and Onaedo: The Blacksmith’s Daughter by Ngozi Achebe.
Chika, who lives in Turnhout, Belgium, with her husband and four children is the first foreign based Nigerian writer to win the NLNG prize which was hitherto reserved for locally based Nigerian writers.
The prize has a cash value of $100, 000.
Congratulations Chika!
Tags: Chika Unigwe, On Black Sisters' Street
nigerian writers (and igbo writers in particular ) stay winning!!
WELL DONE!!!
A NIGERIAN did an amazing thing. What does it matter if she’s Ibo, Hausa or Yoruba?! She is a Nigerian. This constant need we have to point out tribes and sections is the very reason we are not moving forward as a country. She did an amazing thing. She would have done it even if she was born into another tribe!
why does tribe have to always play in, later we complain about racism!!!
Excuse ME but dint Wole Soyinka (Yoruba) win the Nobel prize in Literature? please go have a seat! i dont know why u had to bring tribe into this! multiple people from different tribes make their people proud
Wow nice….. Congrats girl
Congratulations Chika for this beautifulachievement
Of course, you just haaaad to mention Igbo. I can bet you hardly read.
Congrats Chika.
Congratulations girl, keep the fire burning
WOW!!! Well done Chika! This is an awesome and wonderful achievement. To write a book is not an easy feat, let alone win such a prestigious prize. Well done !
Thank God…There is still light at the end of the tunnel. I was almost giving up. Congrats my dear.
Our country can only move forward if we have more YOU with substance, and less of those ikebe shaking yanshes that flood our TVs. More writers,scientists,doctors,pilots,engineers,erudite scholars, etc is what we want to compete effectively and stand among the nations,
Ladies, stand up and be counted.
As long as there is a market for the Ikebe shaking, those products are going no where. Besides the middle class in naija pontificate a lot while patronising very little of real art works. Look around on the Island and see how bookshops are struggling to survive. See how the likes of Wole (Laspapi) struggle to fill a small hall with their exquisite and talent brimming plays and productions. Yet talentless ikebe shaking fellows (no need calling names) are filling auditoriums with ease.
Congratulations to her. It was well deserved
Nice book. Read it last year. Congrats Chika. You surely deserve it. Expecting more ground-breaking publication(s) from you! But Chimamanda still remains my fav contemporary nigerian author
Somme! Lol
I just put her book on hold at my library. I’ll probably get it next week.
Same here Sommie! Congrats to Chika, though.
Congrats Chika. Very well deserved. On Black Sisters’ Street is exquisitely written.
@ Sommie and Nnenne, the sky is big enough for different birds.
wow…….congrats
The two copies i arranged for two weeks back can;t come soon enough.
A very big congrats to her. I was rooting for another author before the final short listing but ever since it was narrowed to 3, her book was my favourite of the three.
Naija fiction writers are on the rise.
On Black Sisters street? What a title. I’m suspicious of any book title with black in it. I’m not reading.
Good one!
To make it easy for Nollywood, since writing is a challenge. The industry could work with literary writers and make the books into pictures.
Thank you very much for your good wishes and messages of congratulations. I am, still, in shock but delighted, honoured, humbled by the win. I have read some of the books on the shortlist (and enjoyed them tremendously).
I am proud you put my town [Osumenyi] on the literature ‘map’. You have also made Anambra state proud – a state that has [produced the] highest number of novelists [prose writers] from Nigeria; arguably, also a state with the most prolific writers. ”Count our writers name them one by one… and it will surprise you what they all have won ”: Prof Chinua Achebe, Prof Chukwuemeka Ike, Cyprian Ekwensi, Nkem Nwankwo, Ifeoma Okoye, Chimamanda Adichie, Dr Chika Unigwe,
WOW!I never knew all the guys are from Anambara.I am indeed proud of my State
Anambara kwenu!
Nice where can I get this book please?
http://www.jeenager.com