[5] She grew up during the two-decade war led by the Lord's Resistance Army rebels, an episode that birthed and influenced her early writing.

[13] It won a writing competition organised by the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative and helped secure her a bursary for A-Level education.

"[18] In November 2018, A Nation In Labour was shortlisted for the biennial Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa, alongside collections by Tanure Ojaide and Servio Gbadamosi.

[24][25][26] Her work appears in 2019's New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent,[27] edited by Margaret Busby.

In December 2018, Anena was named winner of the 2018 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa for her book A Nation in Labour, published in 2015.

Anena received her award at a ceremony in Lagos, Nigeria, attended by Wole Soyinka, Africa's first Nobel Laureate in literature, after whom the prize is named.