It’s the time of the year when small presses around the world nominate their best work in a calendar year for the annual Pushcart Press. For the first time in our history, the Journal of African Youth Literature (JAY Lit) is sending in nominations from works published in all our 2024 issues—this include works forthcoming in our 8th issue slated for release in December 2024. Our nominees for the 2025 Pushcart Press are a strong mix of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. The nominees are as follows:
- “Idunnu” by Tobi Ojenike (Fiction)
- “Kesandu” by Mustapha Enesi (Fiction)
- “A Knock on the Door” by Ndawedwa Denga Hanghuwo (Fiction)
- “Four Incantations for the Earth” by Arikewusola Abdul Awal (Poetry)
- “Who We Are for the Sake of Our Mothers” by Aisha A. Bolaji (Poetry)
- “Now That You Are a Woman” by Evidence Egwuono Adjarho (CNF)
JAY Lit Issue 6 which was released in January 2024 contributed Tobi Ojenike’s “Idunnu” to the nominees’ list, while our Issue 7 released in July 2024 contributed Mustapha Enesi’s “Kesandu”, Arikewusola Abdul Awal’s “Four Incantations for the Earth”, and Evidence Egwuono Adjarho’s “Now That You Are a Woman”. The last two nominees are Ndawedwa Denga Hanghuwo’s “A Knock on the Door” and Aisha A. Bolaji’s “Who We Are for the Sake of Our Mothers”, both of which are forthcoming in JAY Lit Issue 8 due for release in December 2024.
The Pushcart Prize is a brainchild of Pushcart Press founder Bill Henderson, who in 1976, teamed up with a group of Founding Editors that included Paul Bowles, Ralph Ellison, Joyce Carol Oates and Reynolds Price, to start the project. Their idea of the Pushcart Prize anthology still persist until today, recognising and celebrating the best work in the rapidly expanding independent publishing movement. Through the years since, the Prize has honoured the art of thousands of writers and hundreds of presses. Each edition features reprints of work by about sixty authors from dozens of presses as selected from nominations by small press editors and Pushcart’s staff of distinguished Contributing Editors.
More about the Pushcart Prize can be found here.
Congratulations to all our nominees! We wish them the best of luck as Pushcart Press gets down to the business of picking the 2025 winners for the Pushcart Prize.
