2014 African Poetry Book Fund Titles Now Available

Prairie Schooner‘s partner, the African Poetry Book Fund, has released three new titles for 2014: Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor’s The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems 1964-2013, 2013 Sillerman prize-winner Clifton Gachagua’s Madman at Kilifi, and the chapbook box set Seven New Generation African Poets, featuring work by TJ Dema, Clifton Gachagua, Tsitsi Jaji, Nick Makoha, Ladan Osman, Warsan Shire, and Len Verwey. All three are available through the University of Nebraska Press website, and other online and independent booksellers.

The Promise of Hope (pictured above) spans nearly fifty years of Awoonor’s poetry before his death during the Westgate Mall terrorist attacks in Nairobi, Kenya in September 2013. The collection, already in production at the time of Awoonor’s death, is edited by his friend and colleague Kofi Anyidoho. Madman at Kilifi was the winner of the 2013 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, APBF’s prize for African writers who have not yet published a book-length poetry collection. Seven New Generation African Poets is the first of APBF’s annual chapbook box set anthologies featuring poetry by emerging African poets, and is published through Slapering Hol Press with support from Prairie Schooner and The Poetry Foundation.