MyAfricandiaspora.com Short Story Contest Winner Biographies

Grand Prize Winner - Eddie Mark

The Other Wife of Cranston Livingston

Eddie Mark is originally from Buffalo, New York where he began writing fiction and poetry at the age of twelve. He is currently finishing a novel and also a collection of short stories. His favorite authors are Toni Morrison, Vladimir Nabokov, and Edward P. Jones. His favorite books are Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor, and Middle Passage by Charles Johnson. Eddie has taken courses in creative writing at The Johns Hopkins University. He currently lives in Canada where he is pursuing a doctorate in Educational Administration at the University of Toronto.

Literary Winner - Sarah Bass

To Rest

Sarah Bass is a native of Chicago, IL, born to an African-American father and an Indo-Trinidadian mother. She graduated from Amherst College in 2006 with a double major in English Literature and Black Studies. From 2006-2008 she taught 6th and 7th grade English at Frederick Douglass Academy Middle School in South Los Angeles. She then returned to Chicago for a year to study photography. In 2009 she was awarded a Fulbright to Trinidad and Tobago, and she is currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine, Trinidad.

Mystery Winner - Boureima Igodiame Soumana

Near But Far

Mr. Boureima Igodiame Soumana, author of Near but Far (Mystery), is from the Republic of Niger. He has worked for the Ministry of Secondary and High Education, Research and Technology since 1988. He’s first worked as an EFL teacher; then, as an English Language Teaching advisor. Current responsibilities: teacher development. He also works as a language instructor in the English Language Program of the American Cultural Center, American Embassy Niamey, Niger. Interests: reading and writing, mainly fiction, mystery and poetry, and other forms of cultural exchanges.

Romance Winner - Barbara Jenkins

That Old Black Magic

Barbara Jenkins sees herself as an emerging writer – still in chrysalis stage. Until the Cropper Foundation Creative Writing Workshop in 2008, she was only a voracious reader. The following year, she sent some stories to four literary competitions. The Commonwealth Short Story and Wasafiri highly commended and short-listed her stories. Thanks to a life shaped and enriched by Trinidad and the UK, widowhood, three globally dispersed adult children and six grandchildren, she has seen, heard, felt and tasted much. On this, her writing unavoidably draws.

Sci-fi Winner - Ronald T. Jones

Skyboat Strangers

Ronald T. Jones was born in Rochester, New York and raised in the great city of Chicago, Illinois. After conquering the windy city and eventually adding much of the known galaxy to his ever expanding empire, Ronald obtained degrees in fiction writing and history. Now, he casts acquisitive eyes across the verdant landscape of speculative fiction and sets forth to conquer yet again. Ronald is the author of the action science fiction adventure, Chronicle of the Liberator, which is available at Amazon.com and IUniverse.com. Ronald has also contributed a short story, Outpost, to a science fiction anthology called Sci-Fi Talk's Tales Of Time And Space. The anthology is available on Kindle.