Anena, Ojaide and Gbadamosi for $20,000 Soyinka Poetry Prize

The 2018 shortlist for the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature has been announced by the Lumina Foundation. On the shortlist of three is a Ugandan poet, Harriet Anena, and two Nigerians, Professor Tanure Ojaide and Servio Gbadamosi.

Harriet Anena, whose socially conscious debut collection, A Nation in Labour, was launched at the 2015 Writivism Festival in Kampala, Uganda, is no stranger to prizes. She was nominated for the Ghana Poetry Prize in 2013, the Short Story Day Africa Prize in 2017 and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize this year. She has also been interviewed on Konya Shamsrumi.

PoetsTalk: 5 Questions with Harriet Anena

The #KSRCollective interviews Harriet Anena

Anena is an alumna of Makerere University where she earned a Masters in Human Rights. She works as a journalist in Uganda.

Professor Tanure Ojaide
Servio Gbadamosi

Tanure Ojaide is a Nigerian professor of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina. Highly prolific, he has about twenty poetry collections to his credit. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Syracuse University.

Servio Gbadamosi, a doctoral student at the University of Ibadan, attended the Ebedi InternationalWriters Residency in 2016. His poetry collection, A Tributary in Servitude, won the 2015 Association ofNigerian Authors’ Prize for Poetry. He is Programs Director at Sankofa Initiative and Managing Partner at Noirledge & Winepress Publishing.