Nigerian poet Maryhilda Obasiota Ibe has been named one of five recipients of the 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships, awarded annually by the Poetry Foundation to outstanding young poets.
The Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships are annual awards given by the Poetry Foundation to five young, exceptional US poets. The fellowships, each worth $27,000, aim to support the further study and writing of poetry for poets between the ages of 21 and 31. The fellowships were established in 1989 by Ruth Lilly and expanded in 2013 with a donation from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund.
The selection process for the 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships involved a rigorous two-stage review. In the first round, each application was evaluated by one of 13 external reviewers. The highest-scoring submissions then advanced to a second stage, where a separate panel of three additional reviewers assessed them to determine 11 finalists and, ultimately, the five fellows. The group of reviewers are:
- Jessica Abughattas
- Diego Báez
- Jos Charles
- Chen Chen
- Su Cho
- Laura Da’
- Omotara James
- Maya Marshall
- Yesenia Montilla
- Tarnynon Onumonu
- Laura Paul
- Natalie Perman
- C. Russell Price
- Edward Salem
- Madeleine Wattenberg and ‘one anonymous reader’
A Nigerian poet, Maryhilda Obasiota Ibe (she/her) received her BA in English and Literary Studies from the University of Calabar and MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was awarded the 2025 Indiana Review Poetry Prize, 2024 American Literary Review Poetry Prize, and 2020 Bloomsday Poetry Prize.
Her works have appeared in Indiana Review, American Literary Review, Chestnut Review, Brittle Paper, and other publications. She is also a Best of the Net nominee and currently the Hoffman-Halls Emerging Artist Fellow (HEAF) at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing.
Congratulations, Maryhilda Obasiota Ibe!
Bakare Oluwatobiloba
I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!
