Nigerian poet and essayist, Ajibola Tolase has been revealed as the Gold Medal winner in the Poetry category at the Florida Book Awards for his amazing piece, 2000 Blacks.
Established in 2006, the Florida Book Awards is an annual statewide program that honors outstanding literary works by Florida authors and books about Florida.
Administered by Florida State University Libraries, with co-sponsors including the Florida Humanities Council and the State Library and Archives of Florida, the awards recognize excellence across multiple categories, such as General Fiction, Poetry, and Young Adult Literature. Each category awards gold, silver, and bronze medals to the top entries. Notably, the competition is open to both Florida residents and non-residents, provided the content primarily focuses on Florida.
Originally published by the University of Pittsburgh Press on September 3 2024, 2000 Blacks probes the complexity of economic and politically motivated migration from Africa, which has been referred to as “African Brain Drain.” In the first sequence of poems, Ajibola Tolase explores Africa’s history and encounters with the Western world, providing poetic insight into the economic instability precipitated by the transatlantic slave trade and exploitation of mineral resources. Moving inward, the second sequence plumbs the poet’s complex relationship with his father, connecting his emotional and then physical absence with the consequences of community disintegration.
Ajibola Tolase is a Nigerian poet and essayist. His writing has appeared in LitHub, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, and elsewhere. He is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and has received a creative writing grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. He is the 2023–2024 Olive B. O’Connor Fellow in Poetry at Colgate University and graduated from the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Congratulations Ajibola Tolase on this great win!
Bakare Oluwatobiloba
I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!
