The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) has announced KSR Managing Editor, S. Su’eddie Vershima Agema as the winner of their Poetry Prize for 2022. He won the prize with his book Memory and the Call of Waters, a finalist for the NLNG-sponsored Nigeria Prize for Literature worth $100,000. Drawn from a shortlist of five skilled and renown poets, the finalists for the prize included Kabura Zakama (ANA Poetry Prize 1999 Winner) with his Chant of the Angry and Obari Gomba (Pan African Writers [PAWA] Prize 2022 winner; ANA Poetry Prize Winner 2016 and 2017; Longlist, Nigeria Prize for Literature 2022) with his The Lilt of the Rebel.
Agema also notably won the ANA poetry prize in 2014 with his book, Home Equals Holes: Tale of an Exile. In addition to also being a finalist for the Nigeria Prize for Literature, he was announced as a David C. Pollock scholar of the Families in Global Transition (FIGT), a prominent international community that is “a welcoming forum for globally mobile individuals, families, and those working with them.”
The Association of Nigerian Authors Prizes is one of the country’s most respected and prestigious awards drawing hundreds of entries in different genres from Nigerians worldwide each year.
Relatedly, Agema’s short story collection-in-progress, A Maze of Fading Touches, was first runner-up for the ANA/Abubakar Gimba Prize for Short Stories. Other prize winners, announced at the ANA convention awards dinner on October 29th 2022, include Nze Sylva Ifedigbo; Ikechukwu Asika, Amadi Njoku, Lola Akande and Abba A. Abba.
The list of prize winners for 2022 are as follows:
ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIAN AUTHORS POETRY PRIZE
Memory and the Call of Waters – S. Sueddie Vershima Agema [Winner]
The Lilt of the Rebel – Obari Gomba
Chant of the Angry – Kabura Zakama
I know a thing or Two about Madness – Stanley Ejiogu
Dance of A Savage – Charles Akinsete
ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIAN AUTHORS PROSE PRIZE
Deportee – Ikenna Okeh
If They Tell the Story – Ndidi Chiazor Enenmor
Glasshouse – Sumaila Isah Umaisha
ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIAN AUTHORS DRAMA PRIZE
Omalinze (an Igbo Antigone) – Ikechukwu Asika
The Dirty Leap – Olayinka Oyegbile
Clipping the Wings – Georgie Iortema
ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIAN AUTHORS/VIVISAM PRIZE FOR CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
The Invincible Will – Amadi Ekwutosilam Njoku [Winner]
The School Chap – Andrew Bula
Bayo and Friends – Modupe Oyetade
Queen Moremi – Ayo Oyeku
ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIAN AUTHORS/ABUBAKAR GIMBA PRIZE FOR SHORT FICTION
Suitors are Scarce in Lagos – Lola Akande [Winner]
A Maze of Fading Touches – S. Sueddie Vershima Agema
Beautiful Thief and other Stories – Alex Abesadu Byanyiko
Nightmare in Sicily – Nnneoma Michelle Egeonu
ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIAN AUTHORS/MARIA AJIMA PRIZE FOR LITERARY CRITICISM
Abba A. Abba ‘Remediating Biafra: Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun as a Symbolic Vehicle of Postwar Reconciliation’
The Association of Nigerian Authors, founded in 1981 with Chinua Achebe as founding President, aims to promote Nigerian literature in Nigeria and the Diaspora.
