Debut Prize win for Jarred Thompson
- Wits Alumni Relations
Judges say Witsie’s novel heralds the emergence of a new literary star in South Africa.
Jarred Thompson (MA 2022) has been announced as the 2024 Debut Prize winner for his novel The Institute for Creative Dying (Picador 2023) by the University of Johannesburg for South African Writing in English.
The award, known as the UJ Prize, was established in 2006 and is given annually. Previous winners include Wits alumni Mandla Langa (MA 2020, DLitt honoris causa 2019) and Jacob Dlamini (BA 2002, BA Hons 2003). Unlike most literary awards, the UJ Prizes are not linked to a specific genre, as, according to the organisers, the idea is to "open the prize to as many forms of creative writing as possible". Morabo Morojele won the Main Prize for his novel Three Egg Dilemma (Jacana 2023).
The Institute for Creative Dying is a direct result of his master’s in creative writing at Wits and has been praised for being “thought-provoking” and “an astonishing, unique piece of work.”
Ronit Frenkel, chair of the judging panel, described Thompson’s novel as "an extraordinarily original and beautifully crafted novel that heralds the emergence of a new literary star in South Africa". Frenkel said: "The novel centres on five people as they navigate the idea of how to ‘die delightfully’ while exploring the limits of how they have lived. Thompson investigates big metaphysical questions, along with what he calls the “crisis of the ordinary”, through these vastly different characters.
"The book is interspersed with moments of joy, beauty and insight while the characters seek meaning in a difficult world. Issues around mortality and the interconnectedness of everything frame the narrative in profound ways that force the reader to ponder the very same questions when the ending is already known—that, inevitably, we will all die."
Thompson is currently a literary and cultural studies researcher in the English Department at the University of Pretoria and in the doctoral programme. He will receive R45 000 in prize money. He has also been shortlisted for the Sunday Times Literary Awards in the Fiction category for the same novel.
He said: "I think I would mostly like to thank the Wits Creative Writing Department: Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (BA Hons 1999), Prof Ivan Vladislavic (BA 1978, BA Hons 1979) and especially my supervisor, Prof Bronwyn Law-Viljoen (PhD 2017). The MA program taught me so much and I am eternally grateful."
This is not his first award. He has been the recipient of several prestigious scholarships, including the Global Excellence and Stature Scholarship, the Chris van Wyk Creative Writing Scholarship, two National Arts Council Grants and an NRF nGAP Scholarship. In 2020 he won the Afritondo Short Story Prize for the story "Good Help is Hard to Find".
Thompson was first featured in Wits Review. He grew up in Johannesburg and majored in English at Alabama State University, completing his degree summa cum laude in 2016. He was “a stand-out member of the tennis team” during his time there. He says the rich experiences of being away from South Africa added to his writing. “Being away from a familiar world view I had the space to explore other world views.”
In The Institute for Creative Dying five characters – a model, a former nun, a couple in crisis, and an offender newly released from prison – explore “what if we were offered alternative ways to die?” In turn he draws attention to how we live. “The skin cell that’s died and flaked off my body somehow lands up as a fleck of dust on a stranger’s doorstep. How astonishing, then, that so much of ourselves gets shed, and is lost, from the moment we’re born to the day we give up our place in the waking world.”
He told Wits Review: “My master’s started during the COVID-19 pandemic and most of the course was online but I was able to engage with my lecturers and fellow writers and draw value from the experience."