She becomes the fifth Kenyan writer to win the Caine prize, after Binyavanga Wainaina (2002), Yvonne Owuor (2003), Okwiri Oduor (2014) and Makena Onjerika (2018).
She is the inaugural winner of the Margaret Busby New Daughters of Africa award and winner of the Short Story Day Africa prize. Luhumyo’s work has been published in Jalada Africa, The Writivism Anthology, the New Internationalist and more, and was shortlisted for the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship and the Gerald Kraak award. Ndibe, who announced Luhumyo as the winner at an event at the V&A in London on Monday night, was joined on the judging panel by academic and author Elisa Diallo Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane, co-founder and co-host of The Cheeky Natives, a literary platform that focuses on archiving and curatorship of Black artistic expressions visual artist Ade ‘Àsìkò’ Okelarin and Angela Wachuka, founder and managing trustee at Book Bunk, a firm driving the restoration of some of Nairobi’s most iconic public libraries. Okey Ndibe, chair of the 2022 AKO Caine prize judging panel, said Five Years Next Sunday was an “incandescent story”, which used “exquisite language” to tell the story of a protagonist “who is both ostracised and yet holds the fate of her community in her hair”.
The prize, which had 267 entries this year, is awarded for a short story by an African writer published in English.
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