British-Nigerian author Abi Daré has taken home the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize for her novel And So I Roar, sequel to her 2020 debut The Girl with the Louding Voice. Daré, who accepted the £10,000 prize (US$13,292) at a ceremony in London on Wednesday, told the Guardian she was “still slightly stunned but so honoured and thrilled.”
And So I Roar picks up the story of 14-year-old Adunni, a Nigerian girl facing the many perils of poverty and womanhood in Africa’s most populous country, as she continues her difficult journey toward education and finding her own voice. Spotlighting the experiences of women and girls in rural Nigeria was the original focus of the novel, Daré said. “But the deeper I went, the more I saw how environmental collapse bleeds into everything, how in many parts of rural Africa, climate injustice is more felt than understood.”
Judging chair, author Madeleine Bunting, described And So I Roar as “a book of real energy and passion which both horrifies and entertains,” linking the climate crisis to social crises in which women and children are often the victims. “Despite the tragedy, Daré holds faith in the strength of individuals and relationships and her hopefulness leaves us inspired,” she added.
The Climate Fiction Prize, launched last June at the Hay Festival in Wales, aims to highlight novels that tackle themes related to the climate crisis. Titles for the inaugural prize were submitted that month with a longlist announced in November and a shortlist in March.
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Daré was one of five authors to make it onto the shortlist, along with Kaliane Bradley, Roz Dineen, Samantha Harvey and Téa Obreht. “Together, they promote and celebrate the power and joy of storytelling, to show us how we might see ourselves anew in the light of the climate crisis, and how we might respond to and rise to its challenges with hope and inventiveness,” Nicola Chester, a British nature writer and member of the five-judge panel for the prize, said of the shortlist.
When the shortlist was announced, Daré reflected on how much a Nigerian story being recognised mattered in a genre “often rooted in the global north.” She said, “Africa accounts for just 4 percent of global carbon emissions, yet faces some of the harshest effects of the climate crisis. A prize like this matters because it creates space for stories that show how deeply connected we all are and how fiction can open hearts where data alone might struggle.”
Born and raised in Nigeria, Daré moved to the UK to attend the University of Wolverhampton, where she earned a degree in law, followed by master’s degrees from Glasgow Caledonian University and Birkbeck, University of London.
Following the success of her debut novel, Daré turned her attention toward helping people like the fictional Adunni, establishing the Louding Voice Foundation in 2023. Providing educational opportunities to women and girls in underserved communities, the foundation describes itself “as a testament to the belief that education can be the beacon of change for girls trapped in the shadows of domestic labour and gender-based violence in Nigeria.”
