Maryam Kazeem has emerged as the winner of the Huza Press/Goethe Institut Kigali Writing Residency, while Precious Collette Kemigisha came up as runner up.

The residency seeks to support writers as they complete or make significant advances with a work-in-progress novel manuscript. The residency opens up a space for conversations about gender, its modes of construction, histories, representation and relationality to power. Its theme was writing gender.

Here is what the panel has to say about the winner:

“Maryam Kazeem’s writing is sophisticated and beautiful. Her project brims with important and thought-provoking ideas. The novel revolves around naked protests by Nigerian women while engaging with the body, archive(s) and how history is shaped. Kazeem has found an exciting format to interrogate these questions while keeping the reader firmly in the story.”

Joining Kazeem  from component of writers from Germany is Julia Jost, while Nannina Matz emerged as a runner up.

Fabienne Imlinger and Jochen Kӧnigg said of the winning German-speaking writer: “Julia Jost delighted the jury with her application. Her outstanding writing, her unique take on a queer coming of age story set in rural Austria, which she renders with sensitive observations – distant and factual and at the same time intimate and vulnerable – made the difference.”

Jost and Maryam Kazeem will each receive a grant of 2000 Euro for the residency period. They will attend the residency in September where they will work on their novel manuscripts and engage with the literary and creative community in Rwanda.