Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi (born 1960s) is a Ugandan-British novelist and short story writer.Daniel Musitwa, "Ugandan Author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi wins 2013 Kwani? Manuscript Prize", africabookclub.org, 4 July 2013. Retrieved 15 February 2016. Her doctoral novel, The Kintu Saga, was shortlisted"Interview with Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, shortlisted for her novel The Kintu Saga" , kwani.org. Retrieved 12 May 2014. and won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013."Winner: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, The Kintu Saga" , kwani.org. Retrieved 12 May 2014. It was published by Kwani Trust in 2014 under the title Kintu."Kwani Trust launch award-winning writer Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's debut novel Kintu", kwani.org, 16 June 2014. Retrieved 2 July 2014.Beatrice Lamwaka, "Jennifer Makumbi narrates the Ugandan story in Kintu", Daily Monitor (Uganda), 28 June 2014. Retrieved 2 July 2014.Ali Mazrui, "Of Kintu, the witty, sensual and provocative page turner" , Daily Nation, 27 June 2014. Retrieved 2 July 2014. Her short story collection, Manchester Happened, was published in 2019.Ali Mazrui, "In brief: Manchester Happened; Freshwater; Zonal Marking – reviews", The Guardian, 2 June 2019. Retrieved 15 November 2019. She was shortlisted for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for her story "Let's Tell This Story Properly","Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014 Shortlist" commonwealthwriters.org. Retrieved 12 May 2014. and emerged Regional Winner, Africa region."Commonwealth short story prize 2014 regional winners" , commonwealthwriters.org. Retrieved 15 May 2014. She was declared the Overall Winner of the 2014 prize."Ugandan Jennifer Makumbi wins the Commonwealth Short Story Prize", The Commonwealth, 16 June 2014. Retrieved 20 August 2022.Alison Flood, "Commonwealth short story prize goes to 'risk-taking' Ugandan", The Guardian, 13 June 2014. Retrieved 16 June 2014. Makumbi was also longlisted for the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature, was in 2019 awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize in the fiction category, and in 2021 won the Jhalak Prize with her novel The First Woman."South Africans Dominate the Longlist for 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature", BooksLive. 6 November 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
Makumbi is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University."Jennifer Makumbi" , antonyharwood.com. Retrieved 12 May 2014. She lives in Manchester with her husband, Damian, and son, Jordan."New chapter for African writer after top award", Lancaster University, 26 July 2013. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
Early life and education
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi was born and raised in Kampala, Uganda. She is the eldest child of Anthony Kizito Makumbi and the third of Evelyn Nnakalembe. Her parents separated when she was two years old and for two years she lived with her grandfather Elieza Makumbi. During Idi Amin's regime, her father, a banker, was arrested and brutalised. Though he was saved from being killed, he suffered from mental health issues for the rest of his life. Makumbi was brought up by her aunt, Catherine Makumbi-Kulubya. She lived with her family first at Nakasero, then later at Kololo.
She attended Trinity College Nabbingo for O-levels and King's College Budo for A-levels. She did a B.A. degree in Education, majoring in teaching English and Literature in English at the Islamic University in Uganda, where she edited the university magazine, The IUIU Mirror. Makumbi first taught at Nakasero High, an A-level school, then for eight years taught at Hillside High School, an international school in Uganda.
At that time she wrote a play, Sitaani Teyebase, in Luganda for an inter-zone competition. This play won the competition and toured many of the SDA churches within Kampala.
In September 2001, she enrolled at Manchester Metropolitan University to do an MA in Creative Writing. She completed a PhD in Creative writing at Lancaster University."Jennifer Makumbi", lancaster.ac.uk. Retrieved 12 May 2014. Makumbi has taught at various universities in the UK teaching both English and Creative Writing as an Associate Lecturer. Her writing relies heavily on Ganda oral traditions, especially myths, legends, folktales and sayings.About , jennifermakumbi.net. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
Writing
Makumbi began writing at the age of 15, when she wrote, directed and produced a play for a school competition. It came in third. She wrote another play when she was 18 and it too came third. While in Senior 3, she wrote her first play for an inter-house competition, which came third. She wrote her second play again for an inter-house competition at A-level, and once again the play came third. Both of these plays were written in English. In 1994, she started writing a diary in poetry form to expunge her feelings as she was going through a rough patch in her life. She wrote more than 50 poems but never bothered to share them with the public. She started writing prose in 1998 while she was teaching in Kampala.Jennifer Makumbi: Winner of Kwani?'s Manuscript Project, the-star.co.ke Retrieved 12 May 2014.
Makumbi's writing is predominantly based on the oral traditions. She realised that oral traditions were so broad and would be able to frame all her writing regardless of subject, form or genre. She has said she "noticed that using oral forms which were normally perceived as trite and 'tired' brought, ironically, a certain depth to a piece that I could not explain."Bamuturaki Musinguzi, "Oral tradition pays off for Jennifer Makumbi", The East African, 20 June 2014. Her intentions in using oral traditions in fiction are not conservationist as is often presumed in African writing. She draws on oral forms because they anchor her writing in Ganda culture. At the same time, because these oral forms are rooted in her first language, she is confident using them."On how I started to write from African oral traditions" jennifermakumbi.net. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
Her work has been published by African Writing Online and Commonword. She also runs the African reading group ARG! in Manchester, which focuses on obscure African writers. In 2012, her short story "The Accidental Seaman" was published in Moss Side Stories by Crocus Books. In 2013, her poems "Free Range" and "Father cried in the kitchen" were published in Sweet Tongues.
Her doctoral novel, The Kintu Saga, won the Kwani? Manuscript Project, a new literary prize for unpublished fiction by African writers,, Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research, 18 July 2013. Retrieved 12 May 2014.Japhet Alakam, "Jennifer Makumbi wins Kwani Manuscript Prize", Vanguard (Nigeria), 18 October 2013. Retrieved 12 May 2014."Uganda's Jennifer Makumbi Wins Kwani? Literary Prize", The Star, 3 July 2013; via AllAfrica."AWT’s Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi wins the Kwani? Manuscript Project", African Writers Trust, 3 July 2013. and was published under the title Kintu in 2014,Aaron Bady, "In Kintu, a look at what it means to be Ugandan now", Literary Hub, 15 May 2017. being longlisted for the Etisalat Prize for Literature. She was shortlisted for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize alongside two other African contenders (Adelehin Ijasan from Nigeria and Michelle Sacks from South Africa),Flora Aduk, "Uganda’s Makumbi shortlisted for Commonwealth story prize" , monitor.co.ug, 2 May 2014. Retrieved 12 May 2014.Daniel Musitwa, "Commonwealth Short Story Prize Shortlist Announced", africabookclub.com, 3 May 2014. Retrieved 12 May 2014.Commonwealth Foundation, African authors shortlisted for 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, thenigerianvoice.com, 30 April 2014. Retrieved 12 May 2014.Tanya Batson-Savage, "Three Caribbean Writers Shortlisted for Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014" , Susumba, 30 April 2014. going on to become the overall winner with her entry "Let's Tell This Story Properly"."Uganda’s Jennifer Makumbi Winner of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize" , Stream Africa, 14 June 2014."Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Wins the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize", Books Live, Sunday Times, 14 June 2014.James Murua, "Jennifer Makumbi wins Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014 (Woosah!)", Writing Africa, 16 June 2014. Retrieved 11 May 2024.
In March 2018, she was one of eight writers to be awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize, the citation noting: "Kintu tells the parallel stories of the fall of a cursed bloodline—the titular Kintu clan—and the rise of modern Uganda. With an extraordinarily ambitious and agile narrative voice that blends traditional oral storytelling with folk tales, mythology, and biblical elements, Makumbi delivers an incisive critique of contemporary Ugandan class, politics, and religion. Critic Aaron Bady has said that Kintu is a novel about how "all families are built out of silences and fictions." Kintu traces the lineages of these lacunae, in the process charting new possibilities for the future of the African novel."Otosirieze Obi-Young, "Jennifer Makumbi Honoured with $165,000 Windham-Campbell Prize, Alongside 7 Others", Brittle Paper, 7 March 2018.
Interviewed by C. A. Davids in 2018 for The Johannesburg Review of Books, Makumbi said: "The West has too much influence on, and control of, our canon. The books they like—which tend to talk about Europe—are the ones they publish, which get reviewed, studied, written about in journals and which make it into the African canon. That is dangerous. We should wrench the power away from the West and determine our own canon, curated by African publishers and African reviewers."
Makumbi is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.Tom Odhiambo, "'New Daughters of Africa' is a must read for aspiring young women writers", Daily Nation (Kenya), 18 January 2020.
Makumbi's second novel, The First Woman (2020) – published in the US under the title A Girl Is a Body of Water – has received much acclaim. It was described by Alex Clark in The Guardian as "a lively, engaging read ... its energy derives from its considerable wit and the charm of its central character", and in World Literature Today, Adele Newson-Horst called it "spellbinding". Further praise came from The Washington Post, where Bethanne Patrick referred to "Makumbi's glorious telling", while The New York Times concluded: "The reader cannot escape the intimacy of this story. Makumbi's prose is irresistible and poignant, with remarkable wit, heart and charm — poetic and nuanced, brilliant and sly, openhearted and cunning, balancing discordant truths in wise ruminations. 'A Girl Is a Body of Water' rewards the reader with one of the most outstanding heroines and the incredible honor of journeying by her side."Khadija Abdalla Bajaber (1 September 2020), "Set in Uganda, This Coming-of-Age Story Contains Universal Themes", The New York Times. The reviewer in New African (Zimbabwe) wrote that it is "a beautiful book for women, about women, that should be read by all men who would like to understand women". The First Woman was awarded the 2021 Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year."Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Wins Jhalak Prize 2021 for The First Woman", Oneworld, 26 May 2021.
Published works
Novels Oakland: Transit Books, 2017. . London: Oneworld Publications, 2018, The First Woman, Oneworld Publications, 2020
Short story collection
Short stories "Let's Tell This Story Properly", in Granta, 2014 "The Joys of Fatherhood", in African Writing Online "The accidental sea man" , in Moss Side Stories, 2012
Talks "When We Fall Silent Someone Fills Our Silence: How Europe Filled Africa's Silence", Entwicklungsministerium (Ministry of Development), 2023
Awards and honours 2013: Kwani? Manuscript Project, winner 2014: Etisalat Prize for Literature, longlist2014 "Etisalat Prize for Literature announces longlist" , news24.com.ng. Retrieved 7 November 2014."Congrats to the Authors Longlisted for The Etisalat Prize for Literature", Brittle Paper, 7 November 2014. 2014: Commonwealth Short Story Prize, regional winner, Africa