This year's collection includes works from Uganda, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Nigeria. Monica Arac de Nyeko's story is Strange Fruit; she is a member of the Uganda Women Writers Association and won first prize in the Women's World, Women in War Zones writing competition last year. The second Ugandan contender is Doreen Baingana, with Hunger, from the Sun magazine. Baingana has previously. Nigerian writer Chika Unigwe is a contender with The Secret, from online litmag Open Wide. She was a co-winner in the 2003 BBC short story competition and received an honourable mention award in the 2003/2004 Commonwealth short story writing competition. A doctoral student at the University of Leiden in Holland, she lives in Belgium. Brian Chikwava from Zimbabwe is in the running with Seventh Street Alchemy from the Writing Still anthology. Chikwava, who studied at Bristol University, is also a singer-songwriter. Parselelelo Kantai's tale is The Story of Comrade Lemma and the Black Jerusalem Boys Band. Kantai is one of Kenya's leading investigative journalists and the editor of Ecoforum. The Caine Prize for African Writing is named in memory of the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of Booker plc. He was Chairman of Africa 95, and Chairman of the Booker Prize management committee for almost 25 years. The judges for the Caine prize include Alvaro Ribeiro, associate professor of English at Georgetown University, Washington DC, Nigerian playwright Biyi Bandele and Booker-winning novelist Bernice Rubens. The four African winners of the Nobel prize for literature - Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Naguib Mahfouz and JM Coetzee - are patrons of the prize.