Kenyan writer Gladwell Pamba shortlisted for 2026 Caine Prize for African Writing

Gladwell is shortlisted for The Last Shop, first published by Jahazi Press in August 2024.

The Caine Prize is a literary prize for a short story written by an African and published in English. The first prize in 2000 was awarded to Sudanese author Leila Aboulela at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair and celebrated at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, UK.

Chairperson of the judges of the competition in selecting the stories, Bola Mosuro said there were up to five stories selected from over four hundred submissions.

"These five shortlisted stories stood out with their originality. Each author packed a powerful punch in their storytelling with tales that were poignant, shocking, moving and even quirky. Congratulations to them all,” said Mosuro.

Gladwell is a Montreal‐based writer from Kenya, describing herself as a scholar obsessed with the ordinary moments that turn out to be everything.

"My work lives in the space between memory and imagination, in the sentences people underline twice,” notes Gladwell on her website.

She has previously won writing fellowships including the International Literary Seminars, Oxbelly Writers’ Retreat, Greece & CC Adetula Fellowship for African Women in Creative Writing.

She is also the winner of the 2025 Malahat Review Far Horizons Award & Ibua Manuscript Prize 2025. 

“I have previously been nominated for the Best of Net and longlisted for the Writivism Short Story Prize. My works are anthologised while others appear in The Rumpus, The Northwest Review, Waxwing Journal, The Offing, and elsewhere. I have an MA in Creative Writing from Concordia University, and I am currently doing my PhD in English.”

For more than two decades, the Caine Prize has discovered and championed writers from across the continent and its diaspora, bringing bold, original short stories to readers around the world, and opening doors that last a lifetime.

Others shortlisted for the prize include Melara Mvogdobo from Cameroon, and Akinwande Jordan from Nigeria, who is a writer, critic, and editor whose work moves between cinema, literature, culture, and politics.

There is also Yasmine Zohdi from Egypt, a writer, translator and film critic based in Cairo. 

Also present is Zimbabwe’s Simbarashe Kundizeza, whose debut novel manuscript, Freelance, won the 2024 Island Prize for Debut African Fiction.

Other Kenyans who have won the prize in the past include Binyavanga Wainaina with his story; Discovering Home 2022, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor with her Weight of Whispers in 2023 and Makena Onjerika in 2018 with her story Fanta Blackcurrant.

Another Kenyan, Idza Luhmuyo, also won the prize in 2022 with the story Five Years Next Sunday.