By Iminza Keboge
Published February 4, 2020
The winner for the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets 2020 is Cheswayo Mphanza. of Zambia.
Mphanza, who was born in Lusaka, the Zambian capital, and grew up in the Chicago, Illinois, USA, won the prize that is awarded annually to an African poet who has not yet published a full anthology, won the prize with a manuscript titled The Rinehart Frames.
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Besides the US$1000 cash prize, the manuscript shall be published by the University of Nebraska Press according to Prairie Schooner newsletter in which the announcement was made.
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“What the African Poetry Book Fund has always symbolized to me is a conversation among diasporas–which has always been my obsession as a writer and as a participant in the human experience,” Mphanza tells Prairie Schooner via email upon being asked to reflect on his feelings about winning the prize. “To echo and reverberate the voices of so many past and present writers whose concerns were to sustain histories, cultures, and people.”
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Other finalists for the award that Mphanza won include Hazem Fahmy of Egypt/USA for Id; O-Jeremiah Agbaakin of Nigeria for The Root of the Word Babble is Babel; and El Habib Louai of Morocco for Rotten Wounds Embalmed with Tar.
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