The Remember Oluwale Writing Prize, in partnership with Leeds BigBookend Festival, Fictions of Every Kind, and Remember Oluwale was launched to honour the life and death of David Oluwale.

‘A longlist of 26 poems and prose have been selected and will be judged on April 27 by a stellar panel comprising the renowned Caryl Phillips, Marina Lewycka and Ian Duhig who will pick the winners and runners-up in both categories.’

The longlist includes 2 poems from New Zealand authors: Rachel Fenton and Wes Lee.

‘The Remember Oluwale charity was formed in response to a call for a memorial in Leeds for David Oluwale by Caryl Phillips whose book Foreigners: Three English Lives (Harvill Secker, 2007) included an account of David’s life and death. David arrived in Hull in 1949, from Nigeria, and was found drowned in the River Aire in Leeds in 1969. During his time in Leeds, David faced a range of issues: mental ill-health, homelessness, destitution, racism, police brutality, and incarceration in prisons and hospitals. The Hounding of David Oluwale (Vintage, 2008) sets David’s life and death in context, and gives details of the trial of the two Leeds police officers accused of his manslaughter. Now, today, David’s story has resonances with the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown in the US, which were the spring for the Black Lives Matter campaign.’

The 26 authors selected for the longlist, including the winners and runners-up, will appear in Remember Oluwale, an anthology published by Valley Press in June.

The winners will be presented with their prizes at an Awards ceremony on Friday 3 June at the Carriageworks Theatre as part of the Leeds BigBookend Festival 2016.