Pwaangulongii Dauod has won the R25 000 Gerald Kraak Award, which honours African writing and photography that ‘provokes thought on the topics of gender, social justice and sexuality’. 

Dauod won the award for his essay ‘Africa’s future has no space for stupid black men’, originally published in Granta 136: Legacies of Love in July 2016.

The Gerald Kraak Award was launched in 2016 by the Jacana Literary Foundation and the Other Foundation to honour the legacy of social justice and anti-apartheid activist Gerald Kraak (1956–2014). The twenty-two shortlisted entries are collected in an anthology, this year titled As You like It.

The JRB Francophone and Contributing Editor Efemia Chela was shortlisted for her essay on Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, ‘Sailing with the Argonauts’, which was published in the inaugural issue of The JRB in May.

• Read: Sailing with The Argonauts: A personal history of Christmas, queerness and Maggie Nelson by Efemia Chela

From Jacana Media:

The Gerald Kraak Award showcases some of the most provocative works of fiction, poetry, journalism, photography and academic writing by allies of the LGBTQI+ community as fierce defenders of human rights.

As You Like It is a collection of the shortlisted entries from over 400 submissions received from thirteen African countries. It showcases some of the most provocative works of fiction, poetry, journalism, photography and academic writing. This anthology series has become an act of protest, affirmation and love. It represents a new wave of fresh storytelling that stimulates thought and expression on the subject of gender, social justice, sexuality and self-expression.

Commendations

• Photography: Tshepiso Mabula, for ‘Human Settlements’, a series of quiet, unsettling images of a forced eviction in downtown Johannesburg, particularly compelling in the way they explore the play of gender.
• Poetry: Sarah Lubala, for her cycle of poems ‘6 errant thoughts on being a refugee’, ‘Portrait of a girl at a border wall’ and ‘Notes on black death and elegy’: Taught, lyrical, devastating meditations on forced migration and gender-based violence.
• Non-Fiction: Pwaangulongii Dauod, for ‘Africa Has No Space for Stupid Black Men’: An angry, mournful and confrontingly triumphant essay about the life and death of the author’s friend, a man called C-Boy, in a city in northern Nigeria and the queer subculture he built around him; an anthem for the queer Afro-Modern.
• Fiction: Kiprop Kimutai, for ‘The Man at the Bridge’, an exquisitely rendered short story about a man trying to juggle his homosexual desire with his married life; one that eschews easy judgement but rather dissects the compromises that its protagonist is forced to make.

This year’s Gerald Kraak Award judges were Sisonke Msimang, journalist, activist and author of Always Another Country; Professor Sylvia Tamale, a leading African feminist who teaches law at Makerere University in Uganda; and Mark Gevisser, one of South Africa’s leading authors and journalists. 

Msimang says of the shortlist: ‘We are really proud of this selection. It represents some excellent writing and thinking, and reflects the diversity of experiences across the continent. It also mirrors many of the themes that continue to dominate the lives of queer people and of African women: depression, harassment, violence, love and joy.

‘There is a fierceness in many of the pieces we selected—a fight back but also a quirky and authentic take on the world that manages somehow not to be defined by the larger often horribly oppressive contexts in which they were written.’

Submissions for the 2019 Gerald Kraak Award are open from 24 May 2018. Click here for guidelines.