•
The 2025 Shortlist
• The 2025 Shortlist
In partnership with Shenandoah, Ubwali Literary Magazine is thrilled to announce the 2025 Ubwali Hope Prize Shortlist.
DACIOUS KASOKA is an economist, poet, writer and machine learning engineer. A 2023 Best of the Net nominee, his writings have been published or are forthcoming in World Voices Magazine, Writers Space Africa Magazine, Agape Review, Arts Lounge Magazine, The Kalahari Review, Spillwords Press, OBBLT Review, Ubwali Literary Magazine, Pepper Coast Mag, News Diggers newspaper, The Shallow Tales Review and elsewhere. He lives and writes from Lusaka. Read Dacious’s shortlisted poem here.
ISAAC KANYINJI is a Zambian poet and short story writer.
His work has been published in Publishd Afrika, Poemify, and Salamander Ink Mag. Read Isaac’s shortlisted poem here.
MWANABIBI SIKAMO is a Zambian storyteller and award-winning filmmaker. She writes about the lived African experience and the confluence between culture, creativity and indigenous spirituality. Her essays play with form and function and have appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Weganda Review, Ubwali Literary Magazine, Brink, and elsewhere. A Pushcart-nominated essayist, she was a finalist for the Sevhage Literary Prize for Creative Non-Fiction (2023) and the Porter House Review Editors Prize for Nonfiction (2025). Read Mwanabibi’s shortlisted essay here.
MWILA AGATHA ZAZA is a Zambian-Finnish author and development professional currently living in Helsinki, Finland. Her debut novel, The Pretenders, was born in Singapore, where she spent three years as a trailing spouse and rekindled a long-dormant love of writing. Her latest novel is set in Helsinki. Mwila Agatha has spent most of her career in fundraising and communications in the international development sector. She has lived and worked in Ireland, the former Soviet Union and New Zealand. She holds a Master’s in Equality Studies from University College Dublin. Her writing has appeared in The Johannesburg Review of Books and Ubwali Literary Magazine. When she’s not talking to her plants, she’s exploring Helsinki’s libraries and galleries and trying not to step on the Lego that lives on her living room rug. Read Mwila’s shortlisted story here.
MWINJI SIAME is a culture and arts writer who also enjoys writing fiction. Her work has appeared in the Bosphorus Review, Art Düsseldorf, the Feminist Food Journal, and the Republic, amongst other places. She is also an aspiring visual artist. Read Mwinji’s shortlisted story here.
SUWILANJI NAMUSAMBA is an avid reader, foodie, writer, traveler, and shutterbug. In 2001, she was one of the winners of the ANTOA Writing Contest, awarded for her poem Dusk: Earth Rising. Her poems appeared in Ubwali’s inaugural issue, including an ode to happy-ever-after called Dear Future Ntwenukané. Her love letter, My Avocados Are Made of Gold was featured in Bold Ambition’s 2025 anthology “Lover’s Rock”.
She is currently working on her memoir and pays for her expensive habits with her other guilty pleasure, being a full-time lawyer. She holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Zambia and a master’s degree in international commercial law from the University of Leicester (UK). She has worked in private practice, primarily civil and criminal litigation, since admission to the Zambian bar in March 2014. In April 2020, she became the first female Partner at her firm in its 52-year history.
She is a keen mental health advocate and aims to keep winning aunt of the year for teaching the little munchkins in her life how to swim. You can see snapshots of her adventures on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joytotheswirls/. Read Suwilanji’s shortlisted essay here.