Sandisile Tshuma Shortlisted for Thomas Pringle Award

Sandisile Tshuma's short story, Arrested Development, has been shortlisted for the Thomas Pringle Award. The story first appeared in Long Time Coming: Short Writings from Zimbabwe, and was then reproduced in the Longhorn collection When the Sun Goes Down for Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, and in the South African literary journal Wordsetc.

Sandisile was born and raised in Bulawayo. She returned to the city after three years studying Chemical, Molecular and Cellular Sciences at the University of Cape Town, to study Development and Disaster Management at the National University of Science and Technology. She has a keen interest in human rights and is currently engaged as a Programme Associate for the UNESCO East and Southern Africa EDUCAIDS programme. Arrested Development, her first and only published short story, looks with humour at the struggle to survive in Zimbabwe through the eyes of a student researching an essay on cross-border trading.

The Thomas Pringle Award, organised by the English Academy of Southern Africa, is for the best short story published in a newspaper, journal or periodical. The other shortlisted writers are Stephen Watson (Professor in English and Director of the Creative Writing Centre at the University of Cape Town), Liesl Jobson (South African poet and musician, winner of the Inglis House Poetry Contest and editor of the magazine Mad Hatters' Review), Arja Salafranca (South African writer and poet, editor of the Life supplement of The Sunday Independent, winner of a Sanlam Award for Poetry(1994) and for short fiction(1999), and winner of the 2009 Dalro Award for poetry) and Gail Dendy (South African contemporary dancer and poet with six collections to her name, with 5 university degrees).