Moroccan Author Chourouq Nasri’s ‘Blue in Green’ Longlisted for 2017 Short Story Day Africa Prize

The Short Story Day Africa Prize has announced its 2017 shortlist:

According to the release, works on the 21-story longlist “tackle notions of love, sexuality, the phenomenon of menstruation, otherness, and mental illness.”

The only writer from North Africa was Moroccan writer-scholar Chourouq Nasri’s for “Blue in Green.”

The prize’s 2017 theme is “ID,” and organizers were looking for “innovative short fiction exploring identity, especially (but not limited to) the themes of gender identity and sexuality.”

Chourouq Nasri is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at Mohammed I University in Oujda, Morocco, and her research focuses on Francophone and Anglophone Moroccan literature and film.

Most recently, she was one of the co-editors of North African Women after the Arab Spring: In the Eye of the Storm Hardcover (2017).

The other stories on the longlist:

1. ‘Limbo’ by Innocent Ilo – Nigeria

2. ‘All Our Lives’ by Okafor Tochukwu – Nigeria

3. ‘Borrowed by the Wind’ by David Medalie – South Africa

4. ‘God Skin’ by Michael Yee – South Africa

5. ‘Who We Were Then, Who We Are Now’ by Nadu Ologoudou – Benin

6. ‘Plums’ by Kharys Laue – South Africa

7. ‘Waiting’ by Harriet Anena – Uganda

8. ‘The Piano Player’ by Agazit Abate – Ethiopia

9. ‘A Brief Eruption Of Madness’ by Eric Essono Tsimi – Cameroon

10. ‘When the War Came Home’ by Heran Abate – Ethiopia

11. ‘Ibinabo’ by Michael Agugom – Nigeria

12. ‘Fever’ by Alithnayn Abdulkareem – Nigeria

13. ‘Unblooming’ by Alexis Teyie – Kenya

14. ‘Transubstantiation’ by Genna Gardini – South Africa

15. ‘Taba’ by Adelola Ojutiku – Nigeria

16. ‘Bloated’ by Hanna Ali – Somalia

17. ‘The Geography of Sunflowers’ by Michelle Angwenyi – Kenya

18. ‘The House on the Corner’ by Lester Walbrugh – South Africa

19.  ‘Sew Your Mouth’ by Cherrie Kandie – Kenya

20. ‘South of Samora’ by Farai Mudzingwa – Zimbabwe

The three-story shortlist is set to be announced early next year. All the longlisted stories will appear in the anthology ID: New Short Fiction from Africa, scheduled for release in July 2018.