Caine Prize 2026: Black Film Wire's Own Akinwande Jordan Makes the Shortlist
- Sahndra Fon Dufe
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
A member of the Black Film Wire family is having a major literary moment.
Akinwande Remilekun Jordan, a Jr. EIC Fellow at Black Film Wire, has been shortlisted for the 2026 Caine Prize for African Writing, one of the most prestigious honors in African literature.
His story, "So Long Now It's Starting To Look Like Eternity," published by Naira Books in February 2026, is one of just five stories selected from a record-breaking 407 entries across 27 African countries.
Congratulations, Jordan from the entire BFW family.
The Full 2026 Shortlist
The Caine Prize for African Writing announced its shortlist on September 3, 2026, in London. This year's judging panel, chaired by Nigerian journalist and broadcaster Bola Mosuro, alongside Ghanaian-American author Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, Sudanese curator Orsod Malik, South African writer Siphiwo Mahala, and Ugandan-British actress Sheila Atim MBE, selected the following five stories:
Gladwell Pamba (Kenya) : "The Last Shop," Jahazi Press (August 2024)
Melara Mvogdobo (Cameroon) :"Dieu Merci!," Literatur.Review (August 2025)
Akinwande Jordan (Nigeria) :"So Long Now It's Starting To Look Like Eternity," Naira Books (February 2026)
Yasmine Zohdi (Egypt) : "The Absence of Stains," The Republic (August 2025)
Simbarashe Steyn Kundizeza (Zimbabwe) :"The Blue Fighter," The Shallow Tales Review (June 2025)
Judges called the five stories "poignant, shocking, moving and even quirky," noting they emerged from what Mosuro described as a genuine "roller coaster ride of emotions" across the submission pool.
Meet the Writer: Akinwande Jordan
Akinwande Remilekun Jordan writes at the intersection of cinema, literature, and politics, with a focus on how art reflects and pushes back against the societies that produce it, African cinema, gender, power, and the friction between aesthetics and ideology are recurring threads in his criticism. Beyond his work with us at BFW, his essays have appeared in The 49th Street Magazine, What Kept Me Up, Saharan Style, and Screen in Transit.
His shortlisted story appears in the anthology A House That's Not A Home. Naira Books editor Kingsley Alumona said what struck him first was the story's poetic, unusual language and its steady, unfamiliar pacing, and a theme, folded into that title, that will land for a lot of married couples navigating modern life.
Highlight: Melara Mvogdobo (Cameroon)
We're also spotlighting Melara Mvogdobo, representing Cameroon on this year's list with "Dieu Merci!," published in Literatur.Review's annual summer special, a series built specifically to surface fiction from outside the usual literary market gatekeepers. Mvogdobo, born in Lucerne in 1972, has lived across the Dominican Republic, Cameroon, and Switzerland, and has worked as an educator and workshop leader in trauma support and textile craft alongside her writing. Her first novel published in 2023, and her second, Grossmütter ("Grandmothers"), was a 2025 Swiss Book Prize nominee. Literatur.Review editor Axel Timo Purr called her Caine Prize recognition an affirmation of the magazine's mission to carry stories across languages and borders.
The Other Three Stories
Gladwell Pamba's "The Last Shop" marks a shift for Kenyan short fiction, publisher Jahazi Press points to its rural setting and psychological focus as a departure from the political-realist, Nairobi-centered stories that have dominated the scene. Pamba is a PhD candidate at Concordia University and a past winner of the Ibua Manuscript Prize.
Yasmine Zohdi's "The Absence of Stains" ran in the debut fiction issue of The Republic. Fiction editor Chigozie Obioma didn't hold back, calling the story a masterpiece. Zohdi is a Cairo-based writer, translator, and film critic with an MFA from Sarah Lawrence.
Simbarashe Steyn Kundizeza's "The Blue Fighter" comes via The Shallow Tales Review, whose founder Nzube Nlebedim described it simply as a story that "presses on." Kundizeza, based in Harare, won the 2024 Island Prize for Debut African Fiction for his novel manuscript Freelance.
So, What Does the Winner Actually Get?
Good question, here's the breakdown. Each of the five shortlisted writers receives £500 simply for making the list. The overall winner, announced at a ceremony in London later this year before being presented with the Prize again in their home country, takes home £10,000. If a translated work wins, that purse splits 70% to the author and 30% to the translator. Beyond the money, all five stories are being compiled into the official Caine Prize anthology alongside work from this year's live workshop, a real, lasting publishing credit on top of the prize itself.
According to Black Film Wire
The Caine Prize has been the single most consistent launchpad for African short fiction since 2000, having put names like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Helon Habila, and NoViolet Bulawayo on the global map before their novels ever did. What stands out about this year's list is its range, a Kenyan story rejecting Nairobi as the default center of gravity, a Cameroonian-Swiss writer working in German, a Zimbabwean debut novelist, an Egyptian critic-turned-fiction-writer, and a Nigerian critic whose day job is covering the very industry BFW exists to chronicle. That last point matters to us specifically: African film criticism and African literary fiction are often talked about as separate lanes, but Jordan's shortlisting is a reminder that the people building the critical infrastructure around African cinema are frequently the same people extending its storytelling traditions on the page. We'll be following this one all the way to the October ceremony.
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