Nigerian poet and multidisciplinary artist Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi has been named the winner of the 2025 Other Futures Award for her full-length manuscript, dreed of dandelions.
The award is administered by Futurepoem and is presented annually to an innovative work that challenges conventional approaches to genre, language, and literary form.
As the 2025 recipient, Bobi’s manuscript is set to be published by Futurepoem in 2027. The award includes a $1,000 advance, a standard royalty contract, and 25 author copies.
Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi is a Cave Canem Fellow and a poet from Bobi, Nigeria. She is also a multidisciplinary artist and a medical laboratory scientist. Her debut chapbook, Cadaver of Red Roses (2024), won the 2024 Derricotte/Eady Chapbook Prize. She is also the author of Uncensored Snapshots (2025).
In 2025, Bobi received an honourable mention for the Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award for poetry. Her work has been nominated for several major literary prizes, including the Pushcart Prize, the Forward Best Single Poem Prize, Best of the Net, and the Rhysing Award. She is the first recipient of the Carolyn Micklem Travel Scholarship awarded by Cave Canem.
Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Meridians Journal, Strange Horizons, FIYAH, Uncanny Magazine, The Drift, Poetry Daily, Poetry Wales, Torch Literary Arts, Agbowo, and the 2025 Rhysling Anthology, among others.
Congratulations, Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi!
