Zambian creator Mubanga Kalimamukwento has been introduced because the winner of this 12 months’s Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction.
Her profitable manuscript, Shipikisha, was chosen from a pool of a whole bunch of manuscripts. The judging panel for this 12 months’s prize comprised three celebrated Dzanc authors, together with Farah Ali (The River, The City), Chika Unigwe (The Center Daughter), and Sarah Yahm (Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation).
Kalimamukwento is an legal professional, editor and author. She is the winner of the 2024 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, 2022 Tusculum Overview Poetry Chapbook Contest, the 2019 Dinaane Debut Fiction Award, and the 2019 Kalemba Brief Story Prize. Her work has additionally appeared or is forthcoming in Adda, Aster(ix), Overland, the Purple Rock Overview, Menelique, and elsewhere. She is the creator of The Mourning Chicken (Jacana), unmarked graves (Tusculum College Press), Obligations to the Wounded (College of Pittsburgh Press) and One other Mom Does Not Come When Yours Dies (Wayfarer Books). She is the founding editor of Ubwali Literary Journal.
Set in Zambia, Shipikisha tells the story of Sali, a working mom of three on trial for the homicide of her husband, Kasunga. She allegedly shot him after a heated combat of their bed room. Via a braided narrative woven each earlier than and throughout the trial, Sali navigates her husband’s infidelities and alcohol-filled nights, their cash troubles, her postnatal despair, elevating her teenage daughter Ntashé, and an tried abortion in silence.
“Shipikisha is electrical. From the very first web page, I used to be pulled into the worlds of Ntashé and her mom, Sali. It is a e-book the place the passages, stuffed with superbly spare, sharp phrases, serve the story of relationships put to extreme exams”, stated Farah Ali, praising the manuscript.
Sarah Yahm additionally famous, “Kalimamukwento creates an unflinching account of the myriad types of intimate violence and betrayal inside a patriarchal system, interspersed with moments of startling tenderness. She rejects ethical certitude, as an alternative pulling us into the minds of messy, complicated ladies making an attempt to outlive and join in an unjust world.”
Shipikisha will likely be printed by Dzanc Books in March 2026.