The University’s Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice will invite Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo for a month-long residency after she won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing on Tuesday.

The £10,000 Caine Prize, considered one of Africa’s leading literary prizes, was first awarded in 2000. It is named in memory of Sir Michael Caine, who started the Man Booker Prize in order to recognize quality fiction from the British Commonwealth, Ireland, and Zimbabwe. Since 2007, the Lannan Center has invited the winner of the Caine Prize to a month-long residency.

Her prize-winning story [PDF], ”Hitting Budapest,” follows the narrative of a group of shanty town children that scour a wealthy neighborhood looking for food.

“The real story is in the issues,” NoViolet told SW Radio Africa. “Issues like what happens when two different worlds – rich and poor – meet in problematic ways: innocence and the loss of it, violence, humanity and the lack of it.”

Bulawayo was selected from a shortlist of entries submitted by writers South Africa, Botswana, and Uganda.

Want to win £10,000 and a month-long residency at Georgetown?  As long as you’re a brilliant African author (a pretty big caveat, we know), the Caine Prize is for you.

The prize, named in memory of Sir Michael Caine, has been awarded to African authors annually in Oxford, England since 2000.  It was conceived as a tribute to Caine, who served almost 25 years as chairman of the prestigious Booker Prize committee. Thanks to the prize’s many connections to Georgetown, winners are offered a month-long residency here, too. This year, the winner of the  2010 Caine Prize winner is Olufemi Terry.  Terry’s short story, Stickfighting Days, is a gritty tale of street boys in Nairobi who sniff glue and fight.

The prize’s connections to Georgetown include Samantha Pinto, an assistant professor in the English department, served on the selection committee for this year’s award. And of course there’s Alvaro Ribeiro, S.J., a Jesuit in the English department with a long history who often judges the Caine Prize and has a long history with its parent prize, the Booker. (Ribeiro and Caine were Booker Prize judges together for many years.)

As of now, there are no announced events for Terry’s month-long residency, which begins in Feburary 2011. But in the past, Caine Prize winners held readings in Riggs Library. Despite the 2010 prize being the 11^th award, this is only the fourth year of Georgetown offering the winner a residency.