Stormzy's prize for new writers reveals inaugural winners
Grime rapper Stormzy has chosen two winners for his inaugural #Merky Books new writers’ prize, with the award going to both a novel and a collection of poetry.
The half-Brazilian, half-Montenegrin Monika Radojevic has won for her collection of poetry, 23 and Me, alongside Hafsa Zayyan for her novel We Are All Birds of Uganda. The rapper welcomed the results, telling the winning pair: “A lot of talented people don’t fulfil their potential, they are so talented but they sit on it. I call it the beautiful shame. But you guys have the confidence to write, to do something about it, and that’s amazing.”
Radojevic, whose poems draw from “the joys, the confusions and the moments of sadness behind having one’s history scattered around the globe, and the way in which your identity is always worn on your skin, whether you like or not”, said that winning the award “has shown me that people can connect with the story I have to tell … It has given me a platform for my voice to be heard in a way that I have never before experienced.”
Zayyan, who was born to a Nigerian father and Pakistani mother, said that she had entered the competition knowing very little about publishing, and that the award had shown her “that opportunities to have your work recognised really do exist … I am so grateful – and so excited – to have been given the opportunity to tell a story that I have wanted to tell for a long time.” Her novel brings together the stories of Sameer, the son of penniless refugees who graduates from Cambridge and works for a City firm, and Hasan, whose family moved to Uganda from India and whose business now spans multiple locations in Uganda.
More than 1,200 submissions were received for the award, which sets out to find “the stories that aren’t being heard”. According to the poet Kayo Chigonyi, who was on the judging panel alongside Stormzy, “reading for the prize felt like being given a vision of the future. There was innovation among these entries as well as a very welcome collapsing of received notions of literariness,” he said.
Also on the panel were the writer Yrsa Daley-Ward, the writer and agent Nikesh Shukla of the Good Literary Agency and Susan Sandon, MD of Penguin Random House UK. The winners will receive representation from the Good Literary Agency and a publishing contract with #Merky Books, Stormzy’s imprint at Penguin Random House.
#Merky Books has already published Stormzy’s own “story so far”, Rise Up, with its second book, Taking Up Space: The Black Girls’ Manifesto for Change by Chelsea Kwakye and Ore Ogunbiyi out on 27 June.
