Maya Jaggi, Judge 2012, Cultural journalist and critic

I was in the Arctic last week to interview one of Africa's leading novelists. Nuruddin Farah - who now lives in Cape Town - was in Norway's far north to tell a gathering of Ibsen experts by the sea about the impact of the great Norwegian playwright on his fiction. Henrik Ibsen's dramas spoke across centuries, continents and languages to a Somali would-be writer already disturbed by the constraints on women in his own society.

Africa's stories, such as Farah's, now captivate readers around the globe, much as Ibsen's plays have done. They reveal truths to them, not only about aspects of the immense African continent, but about their own lives. As Wole Soyinka responded when I once told him of some critics' surprise at the universality of his writing: "The universal always comes out of the particular, whether you're French or Russian or Nigerian. I'm surprised they're surprised."

As a critic (and previous Caine prize judge in 2006), I don't prescribe - or proscribe - writers' subject-matter. Writers are often chosen by their subjects, rather than the other way round. More at issue are the language, artistry and imagination with which those subjects are handled. As this year's shortlist illustrates, far from being a throat-clearing exercise for the heroic task of the novel, a fine short story can contain a universe.

Chirikure Chirikure, Judge 2012, writer, poet, editor

For me, going through the Caine Prize 2012 entries was a wonderful safari across the width and breadth of the African continent.  With some of the stories set in Francophone parts of the continent, this meant that the safari was not limited to Anglophone Africa only. What an eye-opening trip!

The experience was as varied as the continent is. The textures, tones, flairs and colours of the narratives were a true representation of the diverse and yet comparable cultures of the continent.  The traditional oral approach was as equally represented as the modern, contemporary, experimental voice. The stories were also a sincere reflection of the present-day realities of Africa.

Physical travel from one part of Africa to another is a great challenge. Analysing and awarding points to the different continental voices is an even more daunting task.  But I am grateful to my experience as a publisher, critic and creative artist. And to the wonderful, well focussed panel of judges.  It made it easier to eventually make decisions which, hopefully, celebrate the success of contemporary story writing and also shape the future for the African narrative.

The African story will forever remain a crucial element in the schemes of things artistic. Positive initiatives such as the Caine Prize are invaluable vehicles which deserve as much song and dance to keep them energised and stimulated. The true story of the African narrative is always in conception, developing with vigour. But any smooth, safe birth always requires a committed midwife.

My greatest wish is for the Caine Prize to remain as bold and solid as the baobab tree. Its role in bringing the African experience to the arms of the broader society of the world is noble.  This virtuous initiative also helps in bridging the distances between African nations and cultures.

May the muse keep lighting up the path for the African short story writer!

Nima Elbagir, Judge 2012, International Correspondent for CNN

Whenever I travel around the continent or when I meet fellow Africans elsewhere around the world and they find out I’m a journalist I’m invariably asked the same question; why does the news out of Africa always have to be so unrelentingly bad?

It’s not.

Even just at CNN we have three separate Africa feature strands and so do many of our competitors but I can understand why people still feel this way.

For years it felt like there was only one narrative when it came to Africa and it was not a narrative that we as Africans had any control over.

That has changed as more and more Africans have picked up pens and cameras and taken ownership of their stories.

Reading through the Caine Prize entries really brought home to me what that ownership has brought with it; a conviction that our stories - whether the real or the imagined - have value.

I said at the beginning of the judging that I was looking for stories that were informed by an "Africanness" but managed to avoid the cliched and predictable.

Nebulous I know but I found that and more.

None of these stories carried the baggage of Africa the unfamiliar or Africa the “exotic”.

None relied on the niche or the novel to carry the reader with them. Instead there was a real confidence that their voices – unwatered down to pander to a ”western” palate- were compelling enough, that the truths universal.

Samantha Pinto, Judge 2012, Assistant Professor, Georgetown University

Besides seconding everything that Bernardine Evaristo, in her inaugural Caine Prize blog post, had to say about the Caine Prize and African writing, it is hard to know what to add.  As a second-time judge (my first go-round was 2010), I appreciate her candor and her passion for African writing that does not fit the expected mold.   And as a professor of African literature at Georgetown, an American university, I think about how the West imagines Africa every day.  

Now, challenging others’ ideas about the continent is certainly not the job or primary concern of an African writer. But it is my job, explicitly, every time I teach contemporary African literature and culture. So it is with that in mind that I approach the Caine Prize entries. How are these stories engaging and representing the diversity and innovation of modern African culture?  How do these stories draw in line with the classics of contemporary African literature, and how might they also or instead relate to other forms of media on the continent, from Nollywood to Kwani? to genre fiction?  Where would I place them on a syllabus—and how can I imagine my students receiving them?  Does the writing, in form and/or in content, give us something new and substantial to read, something not easily forgotten?

The Caine Prize has the potential to say “yes” to this last question every year with its shortlist and its winning story.   In this, its generic rules itself are in line with our global, technologically advanced times.  As Jackie Kay, a Scottish writer of African descent, said recently in the Guardian, "I think the short story is perfect for our time, and perfect for people's time . . . You can read a short story in your lunch hour or before you go to sleep and it's a complete experience. You can carry the story around with you in your head and if you put it down in a large field it should still glow because of its intensity."   I hope as a judge to find this intensity in the short fiction submitted for the Caine Prize;  I hope as a teacher that my students learn to carry some of these beautifully crafted stories into a much larger conversation about Africa than the one that exists in mainstream American media.

Bernardine Evaristo, Chair of Judges 2012, writer and poet

The Caine Prize has been instrumental in revitalizing African fiction, through both the prize and its annual creative writing workshops in Africa. We must remind ourselves that twelve years ago it seemed to be almost impossible for new African writers to get published beyond the continent, and certainly not in the UK. I can now think of scores of fiction writers published internationally in the past decade, many of whom have been touched, in some way, by the Caine Prize and its workshops.

So this prize is more than just another award that will sprinkle fairy dust on a single, lucky writer every year  – it is a force for change; it heralds what is new, excellent and exciting in short African fiction, which is usually a stepping stone to the longer form – the novel. This is why the responsibility involved in chairing this particular prize is greater than usual. There are five of us judges from the Sudan, Zimbabwe, the UK and USA and we are currently whittling down the entries. Who knows what stories will gain enough consensus to make the shortlist, a consensus based on our shared understanding of what constitutes top quality literature that, in my previous judging experience, might not accommodate maverick writing and interests.

I’m looking for stories about Africa that enlarge our concept of the continent beyond the familiar images that dominate the media: War-torn Africa, Starving Africa, Corrupt Africa - in short: The Tragic Continent. I’ve been banging on about this for years because while we are all aware of these negative realities, and some African writers have written great novels along these lines (as was necessary, crucial), isn’t it time now to move on? Or rather, for other kinds of African novels to be internationally celebrated. What other aspects of this most heterogeneous of continents are being explored through the imaginations of writers?

I’m also looking for stories that display a strong, original streak, a writer who has a narrative voice, command of craft and ways of seeing that are different, fresh. I’d rather a story is provocative and unsettling rather than familiar, safe and perfectly accomplished. Yet risk-takers are rare. Among the submissions I’ve encountered a lot of uninspired prose that feels so dated, so Middle England circa 1950s, even though it might have been written in Central Africa in 2012. Luckily there are a few adventurers too. But we need more experimentation and daring, stunning image-makers and linguistic explorers who might, for example, infuse English with an African language or syntax. Not necessarily pidgin, but perhaps something else, something new – the English language (and forms) adapted, mutated, re-invented to suit African perspectives and cultures.

The age-old question remains – are too many African writers writing for the approval of non-African readerships, such as the big, international markets in Europe and America? It is understandable, of course, because these are the predominant publishing outlets. Certainly in Britain the taste-makers are, almost without exception, not African in origin. I ask myself - to what extent does published African fiction pander to received notions about the continent, and at what cost? How might this contract the imagination and reduce expectations for readers and writers alike.

For African fiction to remain more than a passing fad on the world stage it needs to diversify more than it does at present. What about crime fiction, science fiction, fantasy, horror, more history, chick lit? To be as diverse as, for example, European literature and its myriad manifestations. Imagine if the idea of ‘European Literature’ only evoked novels about the holocaust, communist gulags and twentieth century dictatorships. I’m looking forward to the time when the concept of ‘African literature’ also cannot be defined; when it equates to infinite possibilities and, as with Europe, there are thousands of disparate, published writers, with careers at every level and reaching every kind of reader.  

Ben Okri will announce the 2012 shortlist on 1st May!

Waigwa Ndiangui talks to Lizzy Attree about the 2012 workshop and his short story "Bloody Buda".