The Remember Oluwale Writing Prize is a new creative writing competition for short stories and poems in response to the life of David Oluwale, who arrived from Nigeria in Leeds in 1949 and faced issues including mental ill-health, homelessness, racism, police brutality and incarceration in prisons and hospitals before being found drowned in the River Aire in 1969. A full account of his life can be read in Kester Aspden’s The Hounding of David Oluwale, and in Foreigners: Three English Lives by Caryl Phillips, who has called for a memorial in Leeds to David.
The writing prize has been launched by the Remember Oluwale charity in association with Leeds BigBookend Festival and spoken word night Fictions of Every Kind. £100 will be awarded to the best short story writer and poet, with £50 each for the next best. The winners and runners up will be published in a Remember Oluwale anthology from Valley Press.