Profile of Judges
PATRON OF THE COMPETITION
Chigozie Obioma
Chigozie Obioma is the author of The Fishermen, which was a finalist for the Man Booker prize 2015, and a winner of other awards, including an NAACP Image award, the FT/Oppenheimer prize for fiction, and several nominations. The novel, which is being translated into 26 languages, is also being adapted into a stage play. Obioma was named one of Foreign Policy's 100 Influential People of 2015. He is a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and in Nigeria where he runs various projects. His second novel, An Orchestra of Minorities was published in January 2019 to wide acclaim and was shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker Prize. It is being translated into 12 languages.
JUDGES FOR THE 2022/2023 MYRAINBOWBOOKS
NATIONAL CREATIVE WRITING COMPETITION FOR CHILDREN
TOYIN ADEWALE-GABRIEL was born in Ibadan, Oyo state. She earned a Master’s degree in Literature in English from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife in 1995. Her works include: Naked Testimonies; Die Aromaforscherin, (Explorer of Aroma), Bitter Chocolate; 25 New Nigerian Poets, ed, Nigerian Women Short Stories, ed and Breaking The Silence, Co-ed. Her work is widely anthologized and has been translated into German, French, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish and Finnish languages. She has presented her work at various conferences and poetry festivals in Africa, Europe as well as North and South America. Adewale-Gabriel has previously served as a member of the Executive of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Editor of the ANA Review and Chair, Women Writers Committee of PEN International, Nigeria Chapter. 
ANIETIE ISONG is the author of Radio Sunrise (winner of the 2018 McKitterick Prize) and the collection of short stories, Someone Like Me (winner of the first annual Headlight Review Chapbook Prize for Prose Fiction). In 2021, his essay was included in Of This Our Country, a ground-breaking anthology celebrating acclaimed Nigerian writers. His latest novel, News at Noon was published in 2022. Isong holds a PhD in New Media and Writing. 
CHIOMA IWUNZE-IBIAM is a fiction writer and second-year candidate in Cornell University's MFA in Creative Writing program. Her stories have appeared in Fiction 365, Maple Tree Literary Supplement (MTLS), Tribes Write Magazine, Flash Fiction Press and more. Her short stories have won the Cecilia Unaegbu Prize for Fiction and the Voice of America Award for flash fiction. Her debut novella, Finding Love Again was published by Ankara Press in 2016. She is an alumni of Chimamanda Adichie's Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop, Fidelity Bank Creative Writing Workshop, the Goethe Institut YA Fiction Workshop and more. She is the founder of creativewritingnews.com. 
SADA MALUMFASHI is a writer and cultural curator from Nigeria. He is the Founder of Open Arts, a literary and arts collective where he curates the Hausa International Book and Arts Festival (HIBAF), a crisscross festival of arts and language by and for African creatives in an indigenous language. His fiction has appeared in Lolwe, Bakwa Magazine, Transition Magazine and New Orleans Review. He is a 2022 arts curator resident at the Al-Balad Arts Residency in the historical district of Jeddah “Al Balad,” a UNESCO World Heritage Site; a 2019 fellow of Reporters Without Borders Germany; 2019 fellow of Arts Omi Residency; and 2018 fellow of the Goethe-Institute/Sylt Foundation African Residency in Germany. His works have explored the Hausa feminist writings. Writing for Asymptote, winners of the 2015 London Book Fair's International Literary Translation Initiative Award, and the premier site for world literature in translation, he has investigated how censorship, religion and conservatism affect the representation of queer lives and relationships in Hausa literature inflected and influenced by local conditions and cultural nuances.
