Former TLC client Jennifer Makumbi has won the Kwani Manuscript Prize for her manuscript The Kintu Saga. Jennifer was awarded an Arts Council Free Read and was mentored by Sara Maitland as part of TLC’s Chapter and Verse programme. A final draft of the book was then read by Jacob Ross.
Jennifer said of TLC and the editorial assessment she received:
“Because of the mentoring scheme, was I was encouraged to carry on writing. Sara Maitland who read the unreadable earliest drafts nudged me gently by telling me what every decision I took implied to the finished novel. Jacob Ross read what I thought was a finished novel but he told me to go back and work on specific things. Jacob is a hawk: nothing escapes his eye. [T]he scheme was critical to my novel both in the formation and editing processes.”
The Kintu Saga is described by the Kwani Manuscript Prize Chair of Judges Jamal Mahjoub as “An ambitious attempt to bring the history of Uganda into the present lives of the novel’s protagonists. Through successive generations, the author sketches out the continued relevance of the past in the present.”
You can read an interview with Jennifer here.
