Kenyan writer Gazemba on Wilbur Smith award shortlist

A manuscript by author Stanley Gazemba is on the shortlist for an award in the inaugural Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, organisers have said.

Gazemba’s Khama, a historical fiction crafted around the story of Shaka Zulu, one of the most influential monarchs of the Zulu Kingdom, is in the running for the Best Unpublished Adventure Manuscript award.

Gazemba told The Weekend: “I am actually excited because that book was one of the earliest I wrote, even before The Stonehills of Maragoli. It had been through EAEP (East African Educational Publishers). I remember Mr (Henry) Chakava (the company’s

chairman) saying it was too graphic. They had the idea that it could not fit in the Kenyan school system. I gave up on local publishers… It is important for gatekeepers in the publishing industry to know that there is a certain type of writing that is not catered for.”

Other manuscripts in contention for the prize are Churchill’s Rogue by John Righten, The Hum of the Sun by Kirsten Miller, Dutch by Mark Isherwood and Starlight & Stone by Zirk van den Berg.

The winner will be offered a creative writing residency at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and career guidance from Kevin Conroy Scott, the literary agent of the South African writer Wilbur Smith.

The winner will be announced on May 12 at an event hosted by the BBC journalist Kate Silverton at the Royal Geographical Society in the UK.

The Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize is run by The Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation, a charitable organisation “dedicated to empowering young writers, the advancement of the adventure writing genre and the promotion of literacy”.

Its founder Niso Smith said: “The foundation’s aim is to aim is to introduce true talent from across the globe to the reading world”.