Poetry Reading: African Poetry Book Fund *ONLINE*

Poetry Reading presented in partnership with the African Poetry Book Fund &Akashic Books celebrating Kumi Na Moja: New-Generation African Poets, A Chapbook Box Set (Akashic Books, 2025), edited by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani. 

Online on Zoom

Featuring readings from each of the poets included in the box set: Abdulkareem Abdulkareem, Hauwa Saleh Abubakar, Aria Deemie, Michael Imossan, Rahma Jimoh, Roseline Mgbodichinma, Adesiyan Oluwapelumi, Leano Debra Ranko, Timi Sanni, and Tjizembua Tjikuzu. 

This eleven-piece, limited-edition box set—an African Poetry Book Fund (APBF) project—features the work of ten new African poets, and is part of a series started in 2014 to ensure the publication of up to a dozen chapbooks every year by African poets through Akashic Books. The series seeks to identify the best poetry written by African poets working today, and it is especially interested in featuring poets who have not yet published their first full-length book of poetry.

Abdulkareem Abdulkareem is a Nigerian writer and linguist. He is a recipient of the Hill-Top Creative Writing Award for Excellence in 2023. He has been nominated three times for the Best of the Net anthology and was nominated for inclusion in the anthology series Best Spiritual Literature. His works appear and are forthcoming on National Museum of Language, Poetry, Transition, Mizna, Waxwing, Uncanny Magazine, Poetry Wales, SAND, Nat. Brut, West Trade Review, Lolwe, Harbor Review, Southern Humanities Review, Isele Magazine, Qwerty Magazine, Shallow Tales Review, Nigerian NewsDirect, and elsewhere.

Hauwa Saleh Abubakar is a Nigerian writer, poet, and journalist. Her work has appeared in Lolwe, Aké Review, The Weight of Years: An Afro Anthology of Creative Nonfiction, Agbowó, and more. Hauwa is the founder of an organic tea brand Maimah’s Cup of Wonders and is currently a journalist with HumAngle Media.

Michael Imossan is a poet of Ibibio origin. He is the author of an award-winning chapbook For the Love of Country and Memory and a pamphlet A Prelude to Caving. He is the 2024 winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry.

Rahma Jimoh is a poet and storyteller from Nigeria. She was a 2023 fellow in the UNDERTOW writing workshop and a winner of the 2022 Lagos/London Poetry Competition. She has been published or has works forthcoming in the Slowdown podcast, Salt Hill Journal, Agbowó, Aké Review, Micro podcast, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Lucent Dreaming, Isele Magazine, Kalahari Review, Brittle Paper, Tab Journal, and others. She is a Sprinng Writing Fellowship mentor, a poetry editor at Olumo Review, and a prose reader at Chestnut Review.

Roseline Mgbodichinma is a Nigerian writer. She is an alumna of the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora (LOATAD) West African Writers Residency program. Her work has been published in Isele Magazine, Brittle Paper, A Long House, North Dakota Quarterly, Tampered Press, Xylom, Willowherb Review, Agbowó, and Sprinng, among others. For more information, visit www.mgbodichi.com.

Adesiyan Oluwapelumi is a Nigerian poet and essayist. Winner of the Teambooktu Poetry Challenge (2024), Oluwapelumi’s work is featured in 20.35 Africa, Brittle Paper, Fantasy Magazine, Poet Lore, Tab Journal, Poetry Wales, Variant Literature, and elsewhere. He is a member of the Poetic Collective (TPC).

Leano Debra Ranko is a poet from Mookane, Botswana, currently residing in Gaborone. An industrial engineer by profession, her poetry has been featured in Dime Show Review.

Aria Deemie is an award-winning journalist and poet. Currently a senior pursuing a master’s in social work at Mother Patern College of Health Sciences, she holds a bachelor’s degree in social work. Deemie is a journalist, social media coordinator, and fact-checker at Local Voices Liberia, a prominent media organization in Liberia.

Timi Sanni is a writer, editor, and multidisciplinary artist from Nigeria. He is the winner of a 2021 Anita McAndrews Poetry Award and the 2022 Kreative Diadem Creative Writing Contest. He has been recognized by Poets Without Borders, Sprinng and has been featured on the Daily Trust. His poems have appeared in Black Warrior Review, New Delta Review, Cincinnati Review, Poet Lore, Palette Poetry, Frontier Poetry, Lolwe, HOAX, and elsewhere. He holds a degree in biochemistry from Lagos State University.

Tjizembua Tjikuzu is an essayist and poet from Aminuis, Namibia. He graduated from the Rutgers-Camden MFA in Creative Writing program in 2021. He has poetry and essays published and forthcoming in Doek! Literary Magazine, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Rigorous, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Consequence Forum, Tint Journal, Elevation Review, Barely South Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Mantis, Worcester Review, Quarter(ly), and others.