Nigerian poet, playwright, and editor Michael Imossan has been announced as the winner of the 2024 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets with his collection All that Refuses to Die. Imossan is the twelfth winner of the prize and joins the ranks of fellow Nigerian poets Tares Oburumu (Origins of the Syma Species, 2022) and Abu Bakr Sadiq (Leaked Footages, 2023) in winning this prestigious prize for three consecutive years. Another Nigerian, Gbenga Adeoba won the prize with his collection, EXODUS in 2019.

Imossan will receive a $1,000 cash award and see his manuscript published as part of the African Poetry Book Fund series by the University of Nebraska Press. His work was chosen by a panel from the African Poetry Book Fund’s Editorial Board, including Chris Abani, Bernadine Evaristo, Gabebo Baderoon, Aracelis Girmay, John Keene, Phillipa Yaa de Villiers, and Kwame Dawes, who serves as the Director of the African Poetry Book Fund and Editor-in-Chief of Prairie Schooner.

The Sillerman Prize, established in 2013 and supported by philanthropists Laura Sillerman and the late Robert F. X. Sillerman, in partnership with the University of Nebraska Press, honors emerging African poets from across the continent and the diaspora. Other past winners across Africa include Tjawanga Dema, Bernard Farai Matambo, Safia Elhillo, Mahtem Shiferraw, Ladan Osman, and Clifton Gachagua.

Imossan, who hails from the Ibibio region, is no stranger to literary honours. He is the author of the poetry chapbook “For the Love of Country and Memory,” co-winner of the Nigerian News Direct Poetry Prize in 2022, and the pamphlet “A Prelude to Caving,” published by Konya Shamsrumi in 2023. He won the 2022 Radical Arts Endless Sky Competition while his manuscript “Broken in Three Places” was a semi-finalist for the Sillerman Prize in 2023. Additionally, Imossan has received the PEN International Writer’s Grant and an honorable mention for the Dibiase Poetry Prize in 2022.

Imossan’s work, known for exploring themes of family, country, self-realization, love, and nature, has been widely recognized. He has been nominated for the Forward Prizes for Poetry, Best of the Net, and Pushcart Prize. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in prominent literary publications such as Frontier Poetry, Lucent Dreaming, Konya Shamsrumi, Sans.Press, Full House, Chestnut Review, Electric Literature, Ake Review, Poetry Columnnd, Sango-Ota, and more.

The 2025 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets will be open September 15 through December 1 to submissions of manuscripts by African poets who have not yet published a full-length collection. For more information or to read about the incredible work done by the African Poetry Book Fund, visit www.africanpoetrybf.org.

(Written by S. Su’eddie Vershima Agema and Jakky Bakong-Obi)