11 poets make 2017 NLNG Prize longlist
The Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) has announced a long list of 11 poets for this year’s Nigeria Prize for Literature. Those on the list include Tanure Ojaide for ‘Songs of Myself: Quartet’, Obari Gomba (For Every Homeland), Jumoke Verissimo (The Birth of Illusion), Peter Akinlabi (Iconography), Hyginus Ekwuazi (One Day I’ll Dare to Raise […]
The Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) has announced a long list of 11 poets for this year’s Nigeria Prize for Literature.
Those on the list include Tanure Ojaide for ‘Songs of Myself: Quartet’, Obari Gomba (For Every Homeland), Jumoke Verissimo (The Birth of Illusion), Peter Akinlabi (Iconography), Hyginus Ekwuazi (One Day I’ll Dare to Raise My Middle Finger at the Stork and the Reaper), and Ogaga Ifowodo (A Good Mourning).
Others are Seun Lari-Williams for ‘Garri for Breakfast’, Humphrey Ogu for ‘Echoes of Neglect’, Ikeogu Oke for ‘The Heresiad’, Abubakar Othman’s ‘Blood Streams in the Desert’, and Ebi Yeibo’s ‘Of Waters and the Wild’.
At $100,000, the NLNG Prize for Literature is the richest in Africa, and honours a published book of literature. It rotates among four genres, poetry, prose fiction, drama, and children’s literature. 2017 is for poetry.
Judges for the prize are Tade Ipadeola, winner of the 2013 prize, which was the last prize for poetry, for his collection, ‘The Sahara Testaments’; Razinat Mohammed, associate professor of literature at the University of Maiduguri; and the chair, Ernest Enenyonu, professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA.
The 2016 prize, for prose fiction, went to Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s novel, Season of Crimson Blossoms.
The 2017 shortlist will be announced in September, and the winner in October.