{"id":10928,"date":"2010-07-06T10:03:21","date_gmt":"2010-07-06T14:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sierraexpressmedia.com\/?p=10928"},"modified":"2010-07-06T10:03:21","modified_gmt":"2010-07-06T14:03:21","slug":"sierra-leones-olufemi-terry-wins-caine-writing-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/?p=10928","title":{"rendered":"Sierra Leone&#8217;s Olufemi Terry wins Caine writing prize"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Sierra Leonean writer Olufemi Terry has won this year&#8217;s Caine Prize for African Writing, regarded as Africa&#8217;s leading literary award. <em>(Photo:\u00c2\u00a0Olufemi Terry: An enormous talent for the future)<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The prize was given for his story Stickfighting Days &#8211; the judges said it presented a heroic culture that was &#8220;Homeric&#8221; in its scale and conception.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">They described Olufemi Terry as a talent with an enormous future.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Terry was born in Sierra Leone, grew up in Nigeria, was a journalist in Somalia and Uganda, and now lives in Cape Town.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">His book is about Raul, a boy who lives in a dump and uses sticks to fight with other boys.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Caine prize, of \u00c2\u00a310,000 ($16,000), is given annually for a short story published in English by an African writer.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Terry, however, told the BBC he thought it was &#8220;unhelpful&#8221; to see writers from the continent as a distinct category.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;There is a danger in seeking authenticity in African writing,&#8221; he told the World Today programme.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">However, he said he was glad to have won the prize, as it would help him get his first novel published.<\/p>\n<p><em>BBC News<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Sierra Leonean writer Olufemi Terry has won this year&#8217;s Caine Prize for African Writing, regarded as Africa&#8217;s leading literary award. (Photo:\u00c2\u00a0Olufemi Terry: An enormous [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":75801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[745,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-and-entertainment","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/75801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}