AFRICA FRESH! New Book from G21: The World's Magazine on Prize Short List

RALEIGH, NC, USA - The Blooker Prize Administrators for Lulu.com, sponsor of the new literary award, announced that Africa Fresh! New Voices from the First Continent has placed as one of the five books on its short list for 2006 Blooker Prize for fiction. The Blooker Prize, an award for books taken from online content, including Blogs and cartoons, is offered in three categories: fiction, non-fiction and comics.

A total of 89 so-called blooks from Africa to Australia were considered for the Blooker Prize, and 16 were shortlisted in the three categories. An overall winner will receive $2,000 while the other two category winners will take home $1,000 each.

Renowned literary critic Evan Mwangi wrote of Africa Fresh! in the Sunday Nation (Kenya) this week: "The stories in Africa Fresh! New Voices from the First Continent attempt to give voice to the voiceless majority and to sound out a warning to the powerful that the end of abuse of office is well near. The writers weave experiences of corruption at everyday level with others of grand national scandals to show the immense suffering ordinary people undergo, thanks to the collapse of ethics and good governance in
post-independence Africa.

"The traditional distinction between the private and the public is destabilised, as failure in governance affects the smallest ways we conduct personal business while personal moral degeneracy eventually finds its way into the public sector.

"… All in all, the narratives in Africa Fresh! New Voices from the First Continent are worth reading and rereading."

Rod Amis, publisher of the Web magazine G21.net, the works of the eight featured authors originally appeared says: "This was a natural evolution for us. These are some of the finest young writers working in Africa today and, sadly, much of their work was being missed by people who don't normally read Web sites. We felt we owed it to each of them to bring their work to a larger audience. That they should be short-listed for the Blooker within months of appearing in print is simply icing on the cake."

The winners of the Blooker Prize will be announced on April 6. The work of the featured writers can be found at G21:The World's Magazine (http://www.g21.net/).