Michael Imossan is the 2024 winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, for his collection, All That Refuses to Die. He will receive a $1000 USD cash award and publication of his manuscript as part of the African Poetry Book Series by the University of Nebraska Press.
Michael Imossan is an Ibibio poet from Nigeria. He is the author of the award-winning chapbook For the Love of Country and Memory (Poetrycolumnnd, 2022) and the pamphlet ‘A Prelude to Caving’ (Konyashamsrumi, 2023).
The judging panel for the Sillerman Prize consists 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.
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.”
The judges also named two noteworthy manuscripts as finalists:
- Adam Vomited the Apple by Animashaun Ameen
- Ara’Luebo by Kanyinsola Olorunnisola.
Imossan is the twelfth poet to win the annual Sillerman Prize, following Abu Bakr Sadiq in 2023 for Leaked Footages, Tares Oburumu in 2022 for origins of the syma species, and Sherry Shenoda in 2021 for Mummy Eaters. These books and more are available from the University of Nebraska Press as part of the African Poetry Book Series.
Established through the generosity of Laura and Robert F. X. Sillerman, the APBF promotes the writing and publication of African poetry through an international complex of additional collaborations and partnerships.
The African Poetry Book Fund sincerely thanked all the poets who submitted manuscripts to the Sillerman Prize.
The 2025 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets will be open September 15th through December 1st to submissions of manuscripts by African poets who have not yet published a full-length collection.
Congratulations to Michael, the finalists, and all the poets who submitted!
Click here to read more!
Bongiwe T. Maphosa
Bongiwe Maphosa is a budding author with a passion for storytelling. With her thought-provoking narratives, she takes her readers on a literary adventure. Bongiwe's works on the human condition from a fresh perspective have earned her recognition and publications in the Avbob Poetry Anthology of 2019, The Writer's Club of South Africa 2021, and JAY Lit in 2021. She hopes to cement her place in the literary community.
