Mubanga Kalimamukwento of Mounds View, Minn., is the winner of the 2024 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, one of the nation’s most prestigious prizes for a collection of short stories. Winners receive $15,000, publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press, and support in a nationwide promotion of their book. Kalimamukwento’s collection, “Obligations to the Wounded,” was selected by Angie Cruz, associate professor in the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences’ Department of English.   

“These thematically linked stories deliver an intricate study of Zambian women living in both Zambia and abroad who are weighing their options of who to love, where to live, where to work,” says Cruz, author of 2022’s “How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water.” “The author, with a poet’s restraint, has written stories that deftly negotiate the challenges and tribulations women face when they feel the pressure and duty to yield to the will of family, community, customs, country and spiritual beliefs. ‘Obligations to the Wounded’ is a graceful, touching and generous collection."

The University of Pittsburgh Press will publish Kalimamukwento’s collection in October 2024. Kalimamukwento is a Zambian attorney and writer. She is the winner the Tusculum Review Poetry Chapbook Contest (2022), the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award (2019), and the Kalemba Short Story Prize (2019).

“Obligations to the Wounded” employs proverbs and short stories rooted in Zambian languages, culture, and place to examine the cost of womanhood through the voices of twelve Zambian women and girls The stories converse with global social problems through games, social media feuds, letters, and folklore and illustrate women’s burdens through the lens of religious expectation, migration, loss of language, death, intimate partner violence and racial discrimination.   

“An absolute dream come true to have been named this year’s winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, especially by a judge whose work I hold deep respect and admiration for,” Kalimamukwento saud. “This is a prize I have been reading AND entering for years, so a win is a kind of ‘Finally’ and ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you’ moment for me.” 

The Drue Heinz Literature Prize recognizes and supports writers of short. The award is open to authors who have published a book-length collection of fiction or at least three short stories or novellas in commercial magazines or literary journals. Past winners include Stewart O’Nan, Elizabeth Graver, Caroline Kim, Leslie Pietrzyk, and Ramona Reeves.