Mustapha Enesi wins 2021 ACT award

Mustapha Enesi has won the 2021 ACT award with his short story; Safety pins are Bad Omens.

“We are delighted to announce that Mustapha Enesi has won the 2021 ACT Award. We thank everyone who sent in stories,” Awele Creative Trust posted via its Twitter handle.

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In his reaction, he described the win as ‘such amazing news!’

Among the stories which impressed the judges with their language, range and willingness to take risks and were shortlisted for the award were: Chideraa Ike-Akaenyi for An Apologia for Daughters; Okechi Okeke for Let Every Space Become a Reminder; Ekemini Pius for Daughters, By Our Hands; Timi Sanni for Wahala for the Good Boy; and Dorcas Akobundu for Rusted Silver.

The organiser quoted the judges to have described Enesi’s work as having an urgency to the story and tenderness to the telling that is gripping. 

Enesi’s story, ‘Kesandu’ won the 2021 K & L Prize for African Literature.

The K & L Prize, an award for the best piece of unpublished fiction by an African resident aged 18 to 25, was founded by New Zealand-based Nigerian writer Myles Ojabo in 2018.

Enesi’s work has been published in The Maine Review, Kalahari Review, Eboquills, The Story Tree Challenge Maiden Anthology, and elsewhere. He was shortlisted for the 2021 Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, and his flash fiction piece ‘Shoes’ was highly commended in Litro Magazine’s 2021 Summer Flash Fiction Contest.