Blue on Jhalak Prize shortlist

Melbourne-based author Maame Blue has been shortlisted for the 2025 Jhalak Prize.

The shortlisted titles are:

• Everest (Ashani Lewis, Dialogue)
• Manny and the Baby (Varaidzo, Scribe)
• My Friends (Hisham Matar, Penguin)
• Namesake: Reflections on a Warrior Woman (N S Nuseibeh, Canongate)
• The Rest of You (Maame Blue, Verve)
• Where We Come From: Rap, Hope and Home in Modern Britain (Aniefiok Ekpoudom, Faber Music).

The Jhalak Prize (first awarded in 2017) and the Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize (founded in 2020) seek to ‘celebrate books by writers of colour in Britain and Ireland’.

In 2024, Yepoka Yeebo won the Jhalak Prize for Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Swindled the World (Bloomsbury), and Hiba Noor Khan won the Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize for Safiyyah’s War (Andersen Press).

More information about the prize – and the shortlists for the children and young adult and poetry prizes – can be found on the Jhalak Prize website.

Category: Awards Local news