We are honored to highlight our shortlisted writers and their work.
POETRY
Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto
Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto’s works have appeared or forthcoming in Isele Magazine, AFREADA, Poet Ireland Review, Oxford Poetry, Massachusetts Review, Frontier, Palette, Malahat Review, The Common, Southword Magazine, Vallum, Mud Season Review, Salamander, Notre Dame Review, ANMLY, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Spectacle Magazine, Ruminate and elsewhere. He lives in Lincoln, NE, where he is pursuing his Ph.D. in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a focus on creative writing (poetry). He was a MacPhee fellow.
Chiwenite Onyekwelu
Chiwenite Onyekwelu’s debut poetry chapbook, EXILED, is forthcoming with Red Bird Chapbooks. His poems appear in Cincinnati Review, Adroit Journal, Frontier, Palette, Hudson Review, Chestnut Review, ONLY Poems, and elsewhere. He won the 2023 Frederick Morgan Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the Alpine Fellowship Prize, as well as the Kari Ann Flickinger Literary Prize. He also won the 2020 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize. Chiwenite served as Chief Editor at The School of Pharmacy, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, where he’s currently an undergraduate.
obasiota ibe
Obasiota Maryhilda Ibe is a Nigerian poet. She has won the Bloomsday Poetry Prize 2020 and has been a finalist for the Palette Poetry Emerging Poets Prize 2022. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Chestnut Review, Brittle Paper, Blue Marble Review, Poetry Column and elsewhere. She is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
DAMILOLA OMOTOYINBO
Damilola Omotoyinbo (Frontier XIX), is a Nigerian Creative Writer and Software Engineer. She is a fellow of the Ebedi International Writers’ Residency, the winner of the SprinNG Writing contest, a co-winner of the Writing Ukraine Prize, a finalist for the SEVHAGE-KSR Hyginus Ekwuazi Poetry Prize and a finalist for the 2022 African Writers Awards. She has work published or forthcoming on Lolwe, Olongo, The Deadlands, Ake Review, AHC, Torch Literary Arts, Agbowó, The Nigerian Tribune and elsewhere. Damilola studied Biochemistry, and her happy places are Pinterest, YouTube and The Church. She tweets @_Damilola_O.
kwame boateng
Kwame Boateng is a young, queer, Ghanaian writer/artist and activist who raises awareness around social issues through writing, performative rituals and ephemeral performances. His works exist at the intersection of art, imagination and Politics. As a performer and a ritualist who moves between genres, they employ their own body as a thought-provoking tool in performative works of art, poetry, photography and videos (new media), to confront his vulnerability in his reality as a young, queer Ghanaian as well as the complexities of his specific cultural moment.
koffi addo ESSAYS
Ekpenyong K. Collins
Ekpenyong K. Collins is a native of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. He is a graduate of English and Literature from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. His works are featured in 20.35 Africa (Issue 2) and in the Nigerian Student’s Poetry Prize Anthology, “Deep Dreams.” He also has a nonfiction piece in Lolwe. His twitter account is: @EkpenyongK74940.
tamani sale
Tamani Tatiana Sale is a Jhar woman, who speaks the Dhouri dialect, from Dull district of Tafawa Balewa local government of Bauchi State. And no, she is not Hausa though she speaks it fluently. She loves writing about everything that trembles her heart and everything that softens it. She is a writer, a poet and a biochemist. When she’s not writing you’ll catch her listening to music and reading novels or books related to psychology.
Denyse Agahozo
Denyse Agahozo is a Rwandan writer whose love for stories began at a young age when she often found herself hovering over candlelight, sharing stories of faraway places with people who couldn’t be more different from each other. Agahozo believes that stories can help us make sense of some of our most unspeakable traumas and often incorporates them in her work in mental health. She writes a blog called Agahozo (something to wipe tears, in Kinyarwanda) on Substack, where she shares her thoughts through fiction and essays. In her free time, Agahozo enjoys conversations with strangers and long naps.
mlami tyulu
Mlamli Tyulu is a South African writer, artist and Candidate Attorney. He was shortlisted for the prestigious Inaugural Toyin Falola Prize in Nigeria. He also conducted creative writing workshops at the Cape Town Arts Festival, at the Artscape Theatre. He has been published in Sock Drawer and Kalahari. He was also invited to speak at the 2021 African Feminisms Conference in Cape Town. Furthermore, he was invited by Utrecht University to submit a chapter for an upcoming book which tackles crucial social issues. He is interested in themes that help us understand life and the human experience – better.
Kosisochukwu W. UGWUEDE
Kosisochukwu W. Ugwuede is an essayist, photographer & journalist from Enugu, Nigeria. Her essays & photographs have been published in DIAGRAM, Psaltery & Lyre, Lolwe, The Forge, Agbowó, The Sole Adventurer, The Arkansas International, and Bloomberg CityLab among several others. Her work has been nominated for the Best of the Net and Best Spiritual Literature anthologies as well as exhibited at the Dhaka Arts Summit and AfriCologne Festival. She is a graduate of Oregon State University’s MFA in nonfiction writing program and holds an undergraduate degree in Microbiology & Biochemistry from the University of Nigeria.
short stories
gabrielle emem harry
Gabrielle Emem Harry is a Nigerian speculative fiction writer. She writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, slipstream and anything with a fabulist bent and is most interested in crafting stories that sit in the gaps between genres, refusing to be strictly defined. She was selected as a 2023 Literary Laddership for Emerging African Authors Fellow and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Strange Horizons, Solarpunk, Apparition, Omenana, Isele and more. Her favourite stories are the ones that feel like dreams.
hussani abdulrahim
Hussani Abdulrahim is from Nigeria. He has a degree in Chemistry from Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. Hussani won Ibua Journal’s 2023 Bold Call, the 2022 Toyin Falola Prize, the 2019 Poetically Written Prose Contest, and WRR’s 2016 Green Author Prize. He was the runner-up for the 2023 Kendeka Prize. He has been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and a finalist for the Boston Review Prize, Gerald Kraak Award and ACT Award. His works appeared in Boston Review, Brittle Paper, Evergreen Review, Solarpunk, and Ibua Journal. He lives in Kano, Nigeria, and is working on a short story collection.
davina kawuma
Davina writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction. She prefers to think of herself as a scieartist i.e. someone who lives at the intersection between the arts and the sciences.
Sanni Omodolapo
Sanni Omodolapo is a Nigerian short story writer. His works have been published in Agbowo, IceFloePress, and RIC Journal.
Ella Ngwakwe
Ella Ngwakwe is a student at the University of Uyo, in AkwaIbom State, Nigeria. She is the second of four children in a typical Igbo household. She is currently in her fourth year of medical school, studying for her MBBS degree. She is a writer and literature enthusiast. She hopes to be a writer who resonates with people. While she dreams of becoming a household name, it is important to her that her writing evokes emotion and creates timeless images in the minds of her readers, irrespective of genre. She also loves to read, draw, swim and dance.
The Writivism Prizes 