About the prize
What is The Obibiezenna Prize?
A literary award given every year to outstanding fiction and poetry by African authors.
Our story
The Obibiezenna Prize is a literary award given to outstanding fiction and poetry works by African authors every year. The prize is awarded to acknowledge writers whose work is original, imaginative, and a unique reflection of the intricacies of African life and experience.
There are no stories lacking in Africa. What it has long lacked is the number of platforms willing to take those stories—and the writers generating them—seriously, with the resources and international attention they deserve. In order to assist in the construction of that platform, the Obibiezenna Prize was founded.
The prize will honour both established and new authors, not only for their work on Africa, but for their work in the field of literature.
Our vision
Literature without apology.
We don't think African literature needs to make excuses for its existence. It should be weird, experimental, intimate, political, funny, speculative, romantic, devastating, joyful, philosophical, ordinary, impossible to categorize.
The Obibiezenna Prize aims to provide an opportunity for this width. We wish to find writers working in new ways with language and form – and to celebrate stories and poems that are influencing the literary imagination of Africa.
Meet the founder ↗