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Change at the top for the Caine Prize


The Caine Prize for African Writing has announced the appointment of Dr Lizzy Attree as the prize’s new administrator, in succession to Nick Elam.


She says: “I hope that the prize will continue to champion African writers who break the mould, writing in diverse and exciting ways about what they like, and will ensure that the prize becomes more widely known on the African continent as a by-word for excellence, as well as in the UK and US, where interest in the prize is surging.”


 Jonathan Taylor, Chairman of the prize stated:  “Lizzy is a worthy successor who will bring new and fresh ideas to the prize at a time when it is of such heightened interest within the literary community and beyond.”


Dr Attree was responsible for organising the Caine Prize 10th Anniversary Tour, funded by Arts Council England, in 2009. She holds a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on "The Literary Responses to HIV and AIDS from South Africa and Zimbabwe from 1990-2005" and, since 2003, has organised several literary tours of African writers in the UK. 


In 2010, she was a visiting lecturer in the English Department at Rhodes University in South Africa and she completed a one year post-doctoral fellowship at the University of the Western Cape in 2009. She is also the author of Blood on the Page, a collection of interviews with the first authors to write about HIV and AIDS from Zimbabwe and South Africa, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing.


Lizzy is taking over from Nick Elam, a former diplomat, who has overseen the prize’s inception and growth since 1999.


At the prize giving dinner on 11 July 2011, Baroness Nicholson, President of the Caine Prize Council, said: “Nick’s passion for African writing, paired with his exceptional reputation, is the reason we asked him to run the prize. He has been an unstoppable force for the Caine Prize over the past 12 years.”


Jonathan Taylor, added: “The growing stature, significance and importance of the Caine Prize in Africa and elsewhere; the series of successful writers’ workshops across Africa; the international publication of the Caine’s shortlisted and workshop writers each year: all of these are Nick’s outstanding achievements.” 


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