Konya Shamsrumi is delighted to announce that our columnist, Star Zahra, has won the prestigious Association of Nigerian Authors/KMVL Prize for Poetry 2025. She won for her sophomore collection, Girls and The Silhouette of Form (Masobe Books, 2024). Her win—jointly with Professor Gbemisola Adeoti for Stoning the Wind—was announced during the 44th Convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors. The judges praised the collection’s “linguistic innovation and emotional resonance.”
In a Facebook post, she wrote:
“It turns out I have just joined a very short list of women who have won the ANA/KMVL Prize for Poetry. I can hardly believe it. Girls and the Silhouette of Form is a joint winner with Prof Gbemisola Adeoti’s Stoning the Wind.
My HOD back at the University of Abuja, Prof Razinat Mohammed and Prof Femi Osofisan were in the audience when it was announced. Thank you so much to everyone who continues to support poets, who continues to read and trust in the miracle of words.
When I got the news, I thought of my daughter and my heart feels full.”
Star Zahra is a Nigerian poet and textile artist whose practice fuses literature and design in what she calls poetic patterning. Her debut collection, Dance of Dawn (AMAB Books, 2018), announced a fresh and lyrical voice in contemporary Nigerian poetry.
Girls and the Silhouette of Form deepens her exploration of womanhood, form, and memory. Beyond writing, she creates textile art that engages cultural preservation, sustainability, and the composite African experience.
Star was first featured in Poets Talk in August 2019, where she described poetry as “the soul’s language and it is this that helps us communicate to the us inside of us”. Since then, she has guest-edited our Black Poets panel and contributed five essays to Konya Shamsrumi. In October 2025, the poet Richard Ali recorded The Star Zahra Quartet comprising four poems from Girls and the Silhouette of Form.
Star Zahra is one of only a handful of women who have won the ANA Poetry Prize, which has been awarded since 1981. Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo notably won with her debut collection, Heart Songs, in 2009.
Congratulations from all of us at Konya Shamsrumi!
About Konya Shamsrumi
Founded in 2019 by Richard Ali and Umar Abubakar Sidi, Konya Shamsrumi has emerged as a vital platform for contemporary African poetry. Its allied collective includes poets Funmi Gaji, Rasaq Malik Gbolahan, Nasiba Babale, Ismail Bala Garba and Tanure Ojaide. The publisher’s digital platform, www.shamsrumi.org, offers poetry content from Africa and its diaspora, while its Digital Editions series—dedicated to chapbooks—is curated by poet and critic Carl Terver.
Issued by: Omokafe Hannah Dennis
Email: omokafe@shamsrumi.org
Phone: +234 817 456 9753