Afrika Redefined Indie Book Advisory Board invites persons drawn from the academia, publishing industry (editors & publishers), writers, and book lovers (beta readers & reviewers) to judge the Prize.
The 2024 prize submissions closed. Judging Ongoing.
Judging is ongoing for the 2024 Afrika Redefined Indie Book Prize. We would like to thank everyone who submitted a short story. The 2024 judging panel is below.
2023 Judges
Lexa Lubanga
Founder Kenyan Readathon
Kenya | Chairperson
Lexa Lubanga is an African literature enthusiast. Lexa found immense success showcasing Kenya’s literary scene while instigating conversations on reading culture in Kenya through The Kenyan Readathon, an annual reading marathon in September aimed at promoting Kenyan literary works. Lexa is passionate about promoting and highlighting the works of aspiring and up-and-coming authors.
Richard Mbuthia
Teacher, Writer, Editor
Kenya | Member
Richard Mbuthia is a Kenyan Tanzania-based teacher, passionate poet, editor, motivational speaker, and author of The Setting Noon and Other Poems (2017) and children’s poetry anthologies he compiled and edited Letters of Gold (2017), Bounding for Light (2018), Sparks in the Dark (2019), and Echoes of the Sun (2020). He has also been published in various local and international poetry anthologies, magazines, and online forums.
Richard is passionate about teaching and developing poetry craft in children.
Dr Michael Dickel
Writer, Editor, Artist
Israel | Vice Chairperson
A writer, publication editor, and artist, Michael Dickel has poetry and fiction widely published in print & online. He edits The BeZine online quarterly. His poetry has won international awards and has been translated into several languages. His most recent poetry collection, Nothing Remembers, came out from Finishing Line Press in September 2019 and received a Feathered Quill Book Award for Poetry. He has a chapbook, Breakfast at the End of Capitalism (Locofo Chaps, 2017) and a flash fiction collection, The Palm Reading after The Toad’s Garden (Is a Rose Press, 2016), among other books.
With Israeli producer/director David Fisher, he received a US NEH grant and wrote a film script about Yiddish theatre. He taught in Israel at David Yellin Academic College of Education, Jerusalem; The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Bar Ilan University; and in the US at Macalester College, the University of Minnesota, and Metropolitan State University, MN.
Xavier Omweri
Reader & Literary Critic
Kenya | Member
Xavier is a book reviewer and literary critic interested in African Literature and its propagation. She is also actively involved in the Kenyan book space, having participated in reading challenges that promote and put to light contemporary and forthcoming Kenyan authors.
Empress Ciku Kimani-Mwaniki
Writer, Editor & Host
Kenya | Member
Empress Ciku Kimani-Mwaniki is a fiction (romance) writer, ghostwriter, newspaper columnist, magazine editor, and mountaineer. She also hosts a YouTube program for writers, Author’s Feet.
Dr Carren Adhiambo Otieno
Reader & Lecturer
Kenya | Member
Dr Carren Adhiambo Otieno is a Kenyan scientist, an author of scientific articles, and a lecturer at the Department of Physical, Biological and Health Sciences, Rongo University – Kenya. She is a researcher with 18 years of experience and 22 years in academia. She has a B.Ed (Science), MSc Botany (Microbiology), and PhD Botany. Her research interest is in improving food security through research on orphaned and endangered food crops, plant pathology, microbiology, and climate change. She is passionate about empowering and encouraging girls to pursue STEM courses, leading to increased visibility.
Brian Lesalon Kasaine
Writer
Kenya | Member
Brian Lesalon Kasaine (LK) is a storyteller based in Nairobi. His love for reading and writing was conceived and midwifed at twelve years at the now defunct Maasai Education Discovery, Narok town. Kasaine later developed a passion for transformative journalism and poetry while in High School. In 2017, he self-published his first book, Around The Campfire, a poetry collection, and then later in 2020 released 3 Bolts From the Blue, a crime thriller short story collection set in Nairobi. Kasaine has also authored the memoirs Through the Eyes of a Pastor’s Wife (2021) and I Press On (working title), a Qazini project releasing in March 2023.
He founded Let’s Tell It, an outfit seeking to build and improve humanity through storytelling in different formats. He is the content manager at Qazini, an online media platform that powers the African narrative, and a contributing author at Oklahoma’s online paper, NonDoc Media. He was recently selected to participate in a screenwriting lab facilitated by film writer Oprah Oyugi at the Kitale Film Week.
Kasaine holds a degree in Co-operative Business (HR Management) from The Co-operative University of Kenya and has also studied Feature Writing (online) with the University of Kent.