Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, The African Poetry Book Fund and Prairie Schooner are pleased to announce that Ladan Osman’s collection, The Kitchen Dweller’s Testimony,
is the winner of the 2014 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets.
Osman will receive a $1000 cash award and publication of her book with
the University of Nebraska Press and Amalion Press in Senegal.
“I deeply appreciate this prize,” Osman said after
learning of the board’s decision. “I have so badly just wanted a chance
to work, to be apparent to people in life and in poems. A bunch of
things happened in the years spent writing this book: I’m excited to
share what came out of those sometimes rough waters, and look forward to
connecting to new readers and new communities.”
The African Poetry Book Fund publishes four new
titles each year, including the winner of the Sillerman prize and one
new volume by a major African poet.
African Poetry Book Fund Series Editor and Prairie Schooner Editor-in-Chief Kwame Dawes praised The Kitchen Dweller’s Testimony,
saying that “only the genius of sincerity of voice and imagination can
allow a poet to contain in a single poem both consuming gravitas and
delightful whimsy. This is what we get again and again from the
splendidly gifted poet Ladan Osman. The editorial team of the African
Poetry Book Fund was unanimous in selecting her manuscript as winner of
this year’s Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets.”
Osman, whose parents are from the city of Mogadishu in Somalia, has received fellowships from the Luminarts Cultural Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center, Cave Canem, and the Michener Center for Writers. Her work has appeared in American Life in Poetry, Artful Dodge, Narrative Magazine, Prairie Schooner, RHINO, and Vinyl Poetry. Her chapbook, Ordinary Heaven, will appear in Seven New Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Slapering Hol Press, 2014). She teaches in Chicago.
Last year’s winner was Kenyan poet Clifton Gachagua, whose collection, Madman at Kilifi, will be published in February 2014.
The Sillerman First Book Prize is named after
philanthropists Laura and Robert F. X. Sillerman, whose contributions
have endowed the establishment of the African Poetry Book Fund &
Series. The Sillerman prize is awarded to African writers who have not
published a book-length poetry collection. An “African writer” is taken
to mean someone who was born in Africa, is a citizen or resident of an
African country, or whose parents are African.
The Fund and its partners also support seminars,
workshops, and other publishing opportunities for African poets, as well
as the African Poetry Libraries Project. As a partner of the African
Poetry Book Fund & Series, Prairie Schooner manages the Sillerman
prize. In addition to Series Editor Dawes, the African First Book Fund
editorial board is comprised of Chris Abani, Matthew Shenoda, Gabeba
Baderoon, John Keene, and Bernardine Evaristo.
