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Alert! Imraan Coovadia has been nominated twice for this year’s main University of Johannesburg Prize – for his novel The Institute of Taxi Poetry and for his collection of essays, titled Transformations.

Coovadia’s books will be up against Ken Barris’ Life Underwater for the coveted R65 000 main UJ Prize. The UJ Prizes, in both the “main” and “debut” categories, are given without respect to genre, which makes the double nomination for Coovadia possible.

In the debut category, Steven Boykey Sidley’s Entanglement, Ashraf Kagee’s Khalil’s Journey and Shafinaaz Hassim’s SoPhia will compete for the R25 000 prize.

Both Coovadia and Sidley’s books have also been shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize this year.

Last year, Craig Higginson won the main UJ Prize for The Landscape Painter and Terry Westby-Nunn scooped the UJ Debut Prize for The Sea of Wise Insects.

The winners for 2013 will be announced later this month, with the awards ceremony taking place later in the year.

Press release

Some exciting names are on the shortlist for the UJ Prizes for South African Writing in English. The shortlist has been compiled from approximately 70 submitted works.

The panel of seven adjudicators has agreed on a shortlist of possible winners:

Debut

Entanglement by Steven Boykey Sidley

Khalil’s Journey by Ashraf Kagee

SoPhia by Shafinaaz Hassim

Main Prize

Life Underwater by Ken Barris

The Institute of Taxi Poetry by Imraan Coovadia

Transformations by Imraan Coovadia

The prize winners will be announced in June 2013 and the prizes will be presented at a gala ceremony later in the year.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

In 2006, the University of Johannesburg instituted two prizes:

The UJ Prize for the best creative work in English; and

The UJ Prize for the best creative debut work in English.

The value of the prizes is:

The UJ Prize: R65 000

The UJ Debut Prize: R25 000

Requirements:

The UJ Prize is awarded to the writer of the best original creative work in English published in the previous calendar year. The UJ Debut Prize is awarded to the writer of the best original creative debut work in English published in the previous calendar year.

The selection panel

The selection panel comprised the following seven members:

Four members of the Department of English, UJ

Two academics from other universities

One member from the media industry or publishing

For the adjudication of the 2012 prizes the panel was as follows:

Four members from the Department of English at the University of Johannesburg

Karen Scherzinger
Craig MacKenzie
Ronit Frenkel
Jane Starfield

One member of media industry or writer

Chris Thurman (Wits)

Two academics from other institutions:

Betty Govinden (UKZN)
Chris Ouma (UCT)

Genre

We decided not to link the prizes to a specific genre. This may make the evaluation more difficult in the sense that, for example, a volume of poetry, a novel and a biographical work must be measured against one another, but the idea was to open the prize to as many forms of creative writing as possible.

Ends

Book details

• Entanglement by Steven Boykey Sidley
  EAN: 9781770102149
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• Khalil’s Journey: - by Ashraf Kagee
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  EAN: 9781431403622
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• SoPhia by Shafinaaz Hassim
  EAN: 9780620519625
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• Life Underwater by Ken Barris
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  EAN: 9780795704086
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• The Institute for Taxi Poetry by Imraan Coovadia
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  EAN: 9781415201657
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• Transformations: Essays by Imraan Coovadia
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  EAN: 9781415201381
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