Doreen Baingana and Tony Mochama for Miles Morland Writing Scholarships

The Miles Morland Scholarship 2013 recipients have been announced with Doreen Baingana, Tony Mochama and Percy Zvomuya getting the nod.

The scholarships awarded by the Miles Morland Foundation were announced at the Caine Prize earlier this year when that American dude won it. The recipients receive a grant of £18,000 to be paid monthly over 2014 to allow them to write a full-length book.

The judges included Ellah Allfrey who was deputy editor of Granta and an editor at Cape as Chair. The other two judges were Nadifa Mohamed, author of Black Mamba Boy and Orchard of Lost Souls, and Femi Terry, 2010 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing with his story Stick-Fighting Days.

Doreen Baingana from Uganda who became famous for her short story collection Tropical Fish is the most familiar name of the winners. She is currently one of the judges for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She proposes to write a fictional account of the life of Alice Lakwena, the leader of the Holy Spirit Movement in Uganda in the 1980s.

Tony Mochama who was for many years the resident party animal in the Standard Newspaper in Kenya has been in fine fettle in the last few years. He was earlier in the year number three in the trio of winners of the Burt Prize 2013 for his book Meet the Omtita’s that launched recently in town. He intends to write a book set in Nairobi in 2063, a hundred years after independence, as seen through the eyes of an 88 year old man .

The other recipient Percy Zvomuya from Zimbabwe intends to write a biography of Robert Mugabe.

There are two Reserves who will take up the Scholarships if any of the three candidates fails to observe the schedule of returning 10,000 words a month to the fund.

First Reserve is Juliet Kushaba from Uganda; Second reserve is Stanley Gazemba from Kenya.

Congratulations to all the winners.