"It was an unfortunate thing to say," said Makumbi. Makumbi was referring to the poet Taban lo Liyong's claim in the 1960s that east Africa was a literary desert. For Uganda, once described as a literary desert, it shows how the country's literary landscape is changing and I am proud to be a part of it." "It was the usual reaction – first you cry, then you jump, then you cry again, then dance, and then you don't really know how to react," she said. Makumbi, who teaches creative writing at Lancaster University and is currently working on her second novel, Nnambi, said she was "over the moon" to win the Commonwealth award, which was presented in Kampala by the novelist and short-story writer Romesh Gunesekera. Chair of the judging panel Ellah Wakatama Allfrey said Makumbi's entry, with its "bereaved widow living in London and gaggle of feisty 'women of a certain age' disrupting a funeral, and its narrative style that draws on a powerful national heritage of dramatic story-telling, significantly expanded our understanding of the possibilities of the short story form". The prize, intended to discover new voices from the countries of the Commonwealth, drew nearly 4,000 previously unpublished entries.
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