New Writing

Novelist Yewande Omotoso has joined UEA on a four-month fellowship established and sponsored by the international telecommunications company Etisalat. The fellowship is intended to celebrate new African fiction, encouraging upcoming African writers while supporting the African publishing industry. Yewande (pictured) was born in Barbados, grew up in Nigeria and currently lives in Johannesburg. She trained as an architect at the University of Cape Town, where she later returned to take an MA in Creative Writing. Her debut novel ‘Bom Boy’ was published in 2011 and shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Literary Awards, the MNet Film Award, and the 2013 Etisalat Prize for Literature. It won the South African Literary Award First Time Author Prize. Her short stories have been published in ‘Speaking for the Generation: Contemporary Stories from Africa’ and The Kalahari Review. Her poetry has appeared in the Baobab Literary Journal, and ‘The Rain’ was shortlisted for the 2012 Sol Plaatjie European Union Poetry Awards. In 2013 she was selected as the Norman Mailer Fellow and as one of the Mail and Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans. While at UEA she will be mentored by Professor of Creative Writing, Giles Foden, the author of ‘The Last King of Scotland’.