Shakirah Bourne’s Josephine Against The Sea is in the finals of FIYAH Literary Magazine’s Ignyte Awards. Josephine Against the Sea is Bourne’s first middle-grade book and is in the Best In Middle Grade category. Blue Banyan Books originally published the novel under the title My Fishy Stepmom in 2019. When Scholastic published it in 2021, however, they changed the name and cover.
FIYAH Literary Magazine is an American publication dedicated to Black speculative fiction. They established the Ignyte Awards in 2020, as well as FIYAHCON; a convention focused on Black, indigenous, and people-of-colour perspectives in speculative fiction. The winners of the Ignyte Awards are determined via online voting and awarded at the convention.
This isn’t the first time that Jospehine Against the Sea has been nominated for an award.
While still a manuscript, it was a finalist for the CODE Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult Literature in 2018. In 2021 it made Rebel Women Lit’s Caribbean Readers’ Awards shortlist. In the 2022 Gine On?! People’s Choice Awards it was nominated for Book of the Year and Bourne herself was nominated for Writer of the Year.
Josephine Against the Heartman, a sequel to the novel, is scheduled for 2023. Bourne also has another novel, Duppy Island, scheduled for release this year.
Although Josephine Against the Sea is her first children’s book, it is not the first book that Bourne has published. Her other books include In Time of Need: A Collection of Short Stories, which she wrote, as well as Senseisha and Allies, both of which she edited. She is also a writer of short fiction, a playwright, a screenwriter, and a film director.
