The winner of the 2024 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets is Michael Imossan for his collection “All That Refuses to Die.”
Imossan will receive a $1000 cash award and publication of his manuscript as part of the African Poetry Book Series by the University of Nebraska Press.
The judging panel for the Sillerman Prize consisted of Chris Abani, Gabeba Baderoon, Aracelis Girmay, John Keene, Matthew Shenoda, Mahtem Shiferraw, and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, with Kwame Dawes, director of the African Poetry Book Fund and the Schooner’s editor-in-chief.
The Sillerman Prize was established in 2013 and supported by philanthropists Laura Sillerman and the late Robert F.X. Sillerman. Over the years, the prize, in partnership with the University of Nebraska Press, has celebrated the work of emerging African poets from across the continent and diaspora.
Award-winning poet, scholar, and professor Gabeba Baderoon praised "All That Refuses to Die," writing that the manuscript's “exquisite language, piercingly memorable lines [are] elegiac but with an insistence on beauty and love.”
Michael Imossan is an Ibibio poet from Nigeria. He is the author of an award-winning chapbook, "For the Love of Country and Memory (Poetrycolumnnd, 2022)," and the pamphlet, "A Prelude to Caving (Konyashamsrumi, 2023)."
The judges also named two manuscripts as finalists: "Adam Vomited the Apple," by Animashaun Ameen, and "Ara'Luebo," by Kanyinsola Olorunnisola.
Submissions for the 2025 Sillerman Prize will be open Sept. 15 through Dec. 1 to African poets who have not yet published a full-length collection.
Learn more about the African Poetry Book Fund and its initiatives.
