Sudanese-American poet Safia Elhillo wins 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets

12:42 PM October, 12 2016

سودانيز اون لاين
زهير عثمان حمد-السودان الخرطوم
مكتبتى
رابط مختصر

http://www.up-00.com/"http://www.up-00.com/"


Sudanese-American poet Safia Elhillo has been named the winner of the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets for her manuscript, Asmarani.
The Sillerman First Book Prize is coordinated by the African Poetry Book Fund, with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s literary journal, Prairie Schooner. These two organisations also run the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry, which was won in January by South African poet Kobus Moolman.
Elhillo will receive a $1 000 cash prize and publication of her manuscript as part of the African Poetry Book Series by the University of Nebraska Press, to be released in 2017.
The judging panel for the Sillerman Prize is made up of the African Poetry Book Fund’s editorial board, including Chris Abani, Bernardine Evaristo, Matthew Shenoda, Gabeba Baderoon, John Keene and Kwame Dawes, who also serves as director of the African Poetry Book Fund and Prairie Schooner editor-in-chief.
The Secret History of Las VegasMr LovermanTahrir SuiteA hundred silencesCounternarrativesDuppy Conqueror
South African poet Baderoon says of Elhillo’s manuscript: “The poems demonstrate a riveting sense of the power of language. They are alert to history and formally compelling as well.
“There is an alluring sense of wholeness to the collection. The themes flow convincingly from poem to poem, and the voice is so confident that I trust the speaker to lead me through sensitive and risky territory.”
From African Poetry Book Fund:
Safia Elhillo is Sudanese by way of Washington, DC. A Cave Canem fellow and poetry editor at Kinfolks Quarterly, she received an MFA in poetry from the New School. Safia is a Puschcart Prize nominee and joint winner of the 2015 Brunel University African Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, also titled Asmarani, is forthcoming as part of New Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tatu), from the African Poetry Book Fund with Akashic Books. Her work has also appeared in several publications and in the anthologies The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and Again I Wait for This to Pull Apart.
More information: African Poetry Book Fund
African Poetry Book Fund also shared an excerpt from the poem “Date Night with Abdelhalim Hafez,” a celebrated Egyptian singer in the mid-20th century to whom many of the poems are addressed:
i’m not looking for anything serious just someone to watch
my plants when i’m gone [you can sing now if you want to]
they’re worried no one will marry me i have an accent in every language