Here are all the authors name and work and country in no particular order of ten (10) works shortlisted by the chapbook editors; Francis Annagu and Chisom Okafor.
- 20 Sonnets – Bruce McRae – Canadian
- A portrait of Violence – Efe Ogufere – Nigeria
- Citizen’s Arrest – Patricia Walsh – Ireland
- Gay Blade – Kenneth Pobo – U.S.A
- Homing Bird – Ebuka Prince Okoroafor – Nigeria
- Love is a Profusion of Roses Growing from the Barrel of a Gun – Olu Familoni – Nigeria
- Silence is the Beginning of Hell – Abdulbaki Ahmad – Nigeria
- Something about love – Adeogo Adedeji – Nigeria
- Spells of my Name – I.S. Jones – America/Nigeria
- Telling the Bees – Bruce Meyer – U.S.A
Authors Biography
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,500 poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are ‘The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press); ‘An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy; (Cawing Crow Press) and ‘Like As If” (Pski’s Porch), Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).
Efe Ogufere He is a Nigerian poet working in Port Harcourt. A few of his poems been featured on journals and magazines such as Sediments Literary Review, The Kalahari Review, Afrikan Mbiu, Ibis Head Review and The Single Story Foundation Issue I. In 2016, he was long-listed for the RL Poetry Award (International Category). In 2017, He was listed by Nanty Green as one of the top ten contemporary poets you should be reading. His chapbook A Portrait of Violence drops in 2019.
Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork, Ireland. To date, she has published one novel, titled The Quest for Lost Eire, in 2014, and has published one collection of poetry, titled Continuity Errors, with Lapwing Publications in 2010. She has since been published in a variety of print and online journals. These include: The Lake; Seventh Quarry Press; Marble Journal; New Binary Press; Stanzas; Crossways; Ygdrasil; Seventh Quarry; The Fractured Nuance; Revival Magazine; Ink Sweat and Tears; Drunk Monkeys; Hesterglock Press; Linnet’s Wing, Narrator International, The Galway Review; Poethead and The Evening Echo.
Kenneth Pobo has published nine books and twenty-one chapbooks. His work has appeared in: Hawaii Review, Nimrod, Amsterdam Review, Mudfish, North Dakota Quarterly, and elsewhere.
Ebuka Prince Okoroafor is a Nigerian Medical Student. He writes Poetry, Fiction, and sparingly, Nonfiction. His work has been featured on Eunoia review, Bangalore Review, Daily Science Fiction, Litro USA, African Writer, Praxis Magazine, Kalahari Review and elsewhere. He is a selected winner of the Green Author prize for poetry 2017, and the winner of the 2019 Sevhage Short Story award. Find him on twitter @bukadobigshow and Ig@show_fantastic_
Olu Familoni has written plays, screenplays, and short fiction. His debut collection of stories, Smithereens of Death, won the ANA Prize for Short Stories in 2015; his debut play, Every Single Day, was selected by the British Council as part of the Lagos Theatre Festival in 2016; he wrote a children’s book, I Will Call My Brother For You, in 2019, and his second collection of stories, This Blue Thing, will be out in the first quarter of 2020. His works have appeared in Panorama Journal, Bakwa Magazine, Jalada Africa, Afridiaspora Anthology, Kikwetu Literary Journal, Ake Review, and others. He presently lives in Ibadan, Nigeria, where he works on radio and is working on a novella.
Abdulbaki Ahmad is a poet, essayist and short-story writer currently rounding up his Electrical Engineering B.Eng program at Kano University of Science and Technology, Wudil. He was the 2019 first-prize winner of the National Engineering Science and Tech Essay Competition (NESTEC) and a 2018 finalist of I Found it Short Story Contest. He has been featured in various international and local anthologies. He currently writes from Kano.
Adeogo Adedeji a Nigerian poet and chess enthusiast. Always learning.
I.S. Jones is a queer American / Nigerian poet and music journalist. She is a Graduate Fellow with The Watering Hole and holds fellowships from Callaloo, BOAAT Writer’s Retreat, and Brooklyn Poets. She is the 2018 winner of the Brittle Paper Award in Poetry. I.S. hosts a month-long workshop every April, called The Singing Bullet. She is a Book Editor with Indolent Books, Editor at Voicemail Poems, freelances for Complex, Earmilk, NBC News Think, Ambrosia for Heads and elsewhere. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, The Rumpus, The Offing, The Shade Journal, Nat. Brut, Puerto Del Sol and elsewhere. Alongside Nome Patrick Emeka, she is the co-editor of the Young African Poets Anthology. She is an MFA candidate in Poetry at UW-Madison as well as the 2019 Kemper K. Knapp University Fellowship recipient. She splits her time between Southern California and New York.
Bruce Meyer is author or editor of 64 books of poetry, short fiction, flash fiction, non-fiction, and literary journalism.
The winners would be release in June, 2020.
And below is a pdf that contains the judge’s comment. It’s a free download!
Hearty congratulations to all!
Thank you.