Short Story Day Africa Alumni

On this page, you’ll find information about writers who have won or been shortlisted for the SSDA Prize. If you’re an agent or publisher and would like to get in contact with any of these writers, or any writer published by Short Story Day Africa, please email us at info@shortstorydayafrica.org and we will link you to them.

Tochukwu Okafor is an MFA Fiction candidate at Emerson College and holds a master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a 2021 Gish Jen Fiction Fellow, an alumnus of the 2021 Tin House Workshop, a 2018 Rhodes Scholar finalist, and a 2018 Kathy Fish Fellow. His work has appeared in the 2019 Best Small Fictions, the 2018 Best of the Net, and elsewhere. He has received awards, fellowships, and residencies from Aspen Words, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts (MASS MoCA), PEN America, Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, GrubStreet, Short Story Day Africa, Sundress Academy for the Arts, Jack Straw Writers’ Program, Bethany Arts Community, Worcester Arts Council, Exxon Mobil, Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, Fishtrap, Longleaf Writers’ Conference, Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, Kundiman, Boston Writers of Color Group, and elsewhere. He lives in Worcester, MA. Pic by Beowulf Sheehan.

Alithnayn Abdulkareem

Alithnayn is a development practitioner and writer wrapping up her masters in development economics at Georgetown University. She is interested in social sustainability, and how development can be more inclusive. Her writing explores some of these issues through op eds and profiles. She also writes fiction and memoir that explore a more personal aspect of her identity as a queer African Muslim. She was first longlisted for the 2018 SSDA Prize and was one of the winners of the 2021 prize. between then she was published by Quartz, Ozy, Harvard's Transitions, Action Aid, Heinrich Boell Siftung, and was shortlisted for the Miles Morland prize in 2021.

Lester Walbrugh

Lester Walbrugh is a Grabouw native and lives and works in his hometown in the Western Cape. His stories have been published on online platforms The Kalahari Review, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and Itch Magazine. Find other stories in the excellent anthologies, Die Laughing and Hair: Weaving & Unpicking Stories of Identity from Tattoo Press; in Hauntings from Jacana Media, and in Short Story Day Africa’s ID and Hotel Africa. 

Let It Fall Where It Will, a collection of these and new stories, was published in by Karavan Press in 2020, and a book, Elton Baatjies, is forthcoming in 2022.

Mirette Bahgat Eskaros

Mirette Bahgat is an Egyptian writer living in Toronto. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Ibua journal, Ake Review, Afreada, HuffPost, and others. She was awarded The European Institute of the Mediterranean writing award and the American University Madalyn Lamont literary award. She was shortlisted for the Short Story Day Africa contest in 2016 and long-listed for the Nommo speculative fiction award in 2019. She is currently working on her debut novel. 

Chourouq Nasri

Chourouq Nasri is an associate professor in the department of English Studies at Mohamed Premier University –Oujda, Morocco. She authored numerous publications on topics related to literature, media and visual culture. She has recently started publishing fiction and literary nonfiction in international anthologies and magazines. She is the author of “Anna” in ID. New Short Fiction from Africa (2018), “Outside Riyad Dahab” in Hotel Africa: New Short Fiction from Africa (2019), “A Bus Ride to Ouad Nachef” in Kohl Journal in 2019, “Wheat Thief” in Tint Journal in 2021 and “Love, a Lens to See the World Through” in Brittle Paper in 2022.

Megan Ross

Megan Ross is a writer, editor and artist from the Eastern Cape. Since being a runner-up for the Short Story Day Africa prize she has won the Brittle paper Award for Fiction, been a Gerald Kraak prize finalist, and had work published in New Frame News, Catapult and The Good Trade. Her first collection of poetry, Milk Fever, was published in 2018 by uHlanga Press.

Noel Cheruto

Noel Cheruto is a Kenyan writer whose work has appeared in Transition Magazine, PRISM International, The Boston Review, Strange Horizons, Isele Magazine, Hotel Africa anthology, Yellow Means Stay Anthology, Johannesburg Review of Books, Kikwetu Journal, On the Premises Magazine, and elsewhere. She won Silver in the Short Story Day Africa Contest, 2019. Since then, she has been named a finalist in the Aura Estrada Short Story Competition and longlisted for the Afritondo Short Fiction Contest and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Noel lives in Nairobi.

Idza Luhumyo

Idza Luhumyo's writing has previously been shortlisted for the Writivism Short Story Prize, the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship, and the Gerald Kraak Award. In 2016, her story 'The Impossibility of Home' was on the Short Story Day Africa Prize longlist. In 2020, she won the inaugural Margaret Busby New Daughters of Africa Award. In 2021, her story 'Five Years Next Sunday' was named winner of the SSDA Prize. Her artistic practice lies at the intersection of law, film, and literature.

Michael Agugom

Michael Agugom is currently an MFA candidate at Texas State University. He is a W. Morgan and Lou Claire Rose Fellow. He has been awarded the L.D. Clark & LaVerne Harrell Clark Literary Endowment Scholarship and the Texas State University Liberal Arts–Graduate College Scholarship. His debut novel manuscript was longlisted for the Dzanc Books Diverse Voices Prize. He is the Filed-Notes Editor at Porter House Review. He has nonfiction published in Prairie Schooner, and fictions published in The Cantabrigian Magazine, Your Impossible Voice, Queer Africa 2: New Stories, ID Anthology: Short Story Day Africa, Capra Review, and other places. He lives in San Marcos, Texas.

T J Benson

TJ Benson is a Nigerian writer and visual artist whose work explores the body in the context of memory, African Spirituality, African futurism, mythology, migration, utopia and the unconscious self. His work has been exhibited and published in several journals like Harvard’s Transition Magazine, Iskanchi, Jalada, SSDA Migrations, Catapult, Bakwa Magazine and shortlisted for awards. His Saraba Manuscript Prize shortlisted African futurist collection of short stories ‘We Won’t Fade into Darkness’ was published by Parresia in 2018. 

His debut novel ‘The Madhouse’ was published in 2021 by Masobe Books and Penguin Random House SA and his second novel ‘People Live Here’ is slated for a 2022 release. He has facilitated writing workshops, more recently teaching a class on magical realism and surrealism within the context of African literature for Lolwe Magazine. He currently lives in an apartment full of plants and is in the danger of becoming a cat person.