Nommo 2019: Novel Nominations

CHILDREN OF BLOOD AND BONE

Tomi Adeyemi

Tomi Adeyemi is a Nigerian-American writer and creative writing coach based in San Diego, California. After graduating Harvard University with an honors degree in English literature, she received a fellowship that allowed her to study West African mythology and culture in Salvador, Brazil. When she’s not working on her novels or watching Scandal, she can be found blogging and teaching creative writing to her 4,500 subscribers at tomiadeyemi.com. Her website has been named one of the 101 best websites for writers by Writer’s Digest.

EMPTY MONSTERS

Cat Hellisen

Cat Hellisen writes weird, lush speculative fiction for adults and children. She’s the author of When the Sea is Rising Red and Beastkeeper, and her short fiction and poetry have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Tor.com, Apex Magazine, Shimmer and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her story ‘The Worme Bridge’ was a winner of the Short Story Day Africa Award. 

FRESHWATER 

Akwaeke Emezi

Akwaeke Emezi is an Igbo and Tamil writer and video artist based in liminal spaces and a 2018 National Book Foundation ‘5 Under 35’ honoree. Their autobiographical debut novel Freshwater was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and has been translated into six languages. Their first young adult novel, PET, will be published in 2019 by Knopf; their second adult novel, The Death of Vivek Oji, is forthcoming from Riverhead Books. Their writing has been published by T Magazine, Dazed, Buzzfeed, The Cut, and Granta Online, among others.

KNUCKLEBONE 

Nechama Brodie

Nechama Brodie is a veteran print, broadcast, and online journalist and is the author of several best-selling non-fiction books including the critically acclaimed urban histories The Joburg Book and The Cape Town Book. Nechama is the former head of TRI Facts training and research at independent fact-checking organisation Africa Check, and is an occasional lecturer and mentor at the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Journalism where she is also a PhD candidate researching South African media coverage of femicide. Knucklebone is Nechama's first novel. 

THE STRANGE

Masha du Toit

Masha du Toit writes fantasy and science fiction set in alternate world South Africa. She trained as a visual artist at the University of Cape Town, specialising in bronze casting. Then she completed a masters in Information Technology. After many years of teaching the creative use of digital media she finally focused on her true passion, writing her own stories.

A SPY IN TIME 

Imraan Coovadia

Imraan Coovadia was born in Durban in 1970. He is also the author of the novels The Wedding, Green-Eyed Thieves, High Low In-between and The Institute for Taxi Poetry. He has also published a study of V.S. Naipaul, as well as a collection of essays, Transformations, and has contributed to several publications including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Independent, Chimurenga and The Times of India. His work has won the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the University of Johannesburg Prize and the M-Net Prize.