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Kwela’s Mary Watson wins 2006 Caine PrizePress release
Mary Watson, a lecturer at the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Film and Media Studies, was awarded the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing at a dinner ceremony held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, UK, last night. Watson won the £10, 000 prize for her story “ Jungfrau” which appears in Moss, her collection of short stories published by Kwela Books in 2004. The story is told from the perspective of Evelyn, a young girl whose mother works as a dedicated teacher in the last years of Apartheid South Africa. Speaking from London in response to her win, Watson said: “I’m delighted. There is so much exciting work emerging from Africa that I’m pleased my story stood out for the judges. It feels like a firm step in realising my life-long ambition of being a full-time writer.” Watson wrote the stories, eventually published by Kwela as Moss, while working on her Masters in Creative Writing at UCT under the tutelage of Professor André Brink in 2001. Professor Brink describes Watson as “incredibly talented” and believes her to be “one of the best short-story writers in the world today, comparable to the likes of Canada’s Alice Monroe.” Brink also expressed his hopes that exposure of this nature would give Watson the recognition she deserves as a writer. Nana Wilson-Tagoe, Chair of the Caine Prize judges panel, described Watson’s story as “… a powerfully written narrative that works skilfully through a child’s imagination to suggest a world of insights about familial and social relationships in the new South Africa.” She also described “ Jungfrau” as “superbly written and do[ing] what a short story should do, by leaving spaces around its narrative in which readers can enter again and again.” This is the first time a South African has been awarded the Caine Prize and is the seventh prize to be awarded since its inception in 2000. The Caine Prize is often referred to as “The African Booker” since it is named after Sir Michael Caine who chaired the Booker Prize management committee for almost 25 years.
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