Neil Gaiman won the Carnegie medal for The Graveyard Book, about a boy named Nobody Owens who is raised by ghosts in a graveyard, an idea that initially came to him 25 years ago. Gaiman says, “It’s particularly fantastic for me because it was the first literary prize I was ever aware of as a kid…it’s like writing a letter to yourself aged seven.”
The Carnegie medal is awarded annually to the writer of an outstanding book for children.
Olufemi Terry won the 2010 Caine Prize for African Writing, Africa’s leading literary award, for the short story “Stickfighting Days,” published in Chimurenga, volume 12/13.
Terry was born in Sierra Leone of African and Antillean parentage. He grew up in Nigeria, the U.K, and Cote d’Ivoire and pursued a university in New York. Since then Terry has lived in Kenya and worked as a journalist and analyst in Somalia and Uganda. He currently lives in Cape Town where he is writing his first novel.
The Economist’s literary editor, Fiammetta Rocco, called the story “ambitious, brave and hugely imaginative… The execution of this story is so tight and the presentation so cinematic, it confirms Olufemi Terry as a talent with an enormous future.”
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